Lou S.

An ex-spouse is not a current spouse so you are correct.

We have auto-rollovered all balances for non-repsonsive/lost participants on plan termination, even if balance is over $5,000.

Oh, yeah forgot about that. Saw that once too. As for your original question, not sure if the plan is really considered qualified by the IRS or not but I have seen it done on occasion. I suppose you do run some risk on audit or if applying for DL.

The only time I've seen it is when it is a small owner only plan that wants to invest in non-traditional assets, usually mortgages to unrealted thrid parties or real-estate and the cost of administering a plan is much smaller than the asset fees to an IRA trustee holding non-traditional assest but otherwise, I agree with jpod.

A qualified plan can always discrimate against HCEs and an employer with no NHCEs pases testing automatically. No problem at all with cross-tested contribution in this case, seperate groups seems the most flexible.

Great question. No clue on the answer.

Unless the submit an affirmative deferral election percentage I would assume they remain in the default election. That is investment direction is separate from deferral election.

Not yet but sure sounds like something the IRS would do. Every year seems we get a few notices of late filing for plans properly on extension.

The documents I've seen 5.4% are written something like 80% of the TWB + $1 or 80.01% of TWB. As far back as I can recall exactly 80% limits you to 4.3% disparity, even back in 1995.

Have you talked to an employement attorney with ERISA experience?

Why do you hate freedom?

It is a question of cost benefit. Is the cost of terminating the old plan and establishing a new one less than assuming the risk of problems with the old plan.

Yes, no one has yet reached the last day of the year allocation condition. You can amend allocation method up until 12/31 with running into anti-cutback issues.

Does anyone use it? How do you like it? Did you convert from another recordkeeping system? If so, was that hard?

No. While all IRAs of a participant can be aggregated and the minimimum distribution be taken from any one, each qualified plan must indepedently satisfy the RMD requirements.

You have it correct. As for advice I suppose not allowing loans or at least loan defualts is out of the question.

Yeah right now it is a prohibited loan to the employer/owner. If he doesn't pay it back, it is called theft and generally has criminal implications.

I would be uncomfortable giving advice in this situation but I suspect things like this have been going on one day less than government programs tied to income caps have been going on.

I've seen similar patternes with PS money being requested for hardship on an annual basis but defering for 6 months than taking it out as harship seems nutty as ESOP guy implies above, unless there is a generous match that overcomes the negative tax consequeses.

Government intent? Becasue they said so? I'm guessing at govenment intent but because they are allowing sfae-harbor contributions to "buyout" testing they seem to be treating safe harbor contributions as true retirement plan contributions much the same way they treated momey purcahse and target benefit. As for correcting I agree with BG, check EPCRS. Participants were probably allowed to take safe harbor monies becuase they didn't have other amounts but it might be worth cheching to see if participants did have sources that were eligible and just move money around now to put them where they would have been had the funds come out of the correct eligible sources.

Agree 1©(9) is where CCT goes on Sch H Call Met Life (or custodian of assets) on Schedule A question, they should know the answer pretty quick.

Sounds like a partial termination upon the complete discontinuance of employer contributions. Just curious how are they buying back the stock when vested participants leave and take a distribution? Granted I don't really work on ESOPs but generally the ones I've seen the company often needs to make contributions just to have cash in the Plan to pay on going distributions.

Cross test the contribution. Have groups A, B & C.

Even if the CB credit is 5% it is unlikely the DC equivalent for gateway testing is exactly 5%. Or simply put CB credit of X% is generally not X% for gateway testing.

The DB allocation rate has to be converted to a hypothetical contribution rate for each person whihc can be used to satisfy some or all of the 7.5% gateway. 0.5% cash balance credit probably not equal to 0.5% contribution for gateway testing. And 0.5% accrual in DB is very unlikely to be exactly 0.5% contribution rate for gateway. If you are using the gateway and your requirement is 7.5% then all NHCEs that get any employer allocation must get 7.5% to pass gateway.