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Good afternoon, In a takeover case, the employer would like to do the following in his new document: 1. Annuities are the normal form of benefit in the current 401(k) plan document. The employer maintains that he did not know this, that nobody has ever been offered an annuity nor have they inquired about one, and certainly nobody has ever taken one. He was genuinely shocked to hear that this provision is in is current document. He maintains that they never had a Money Purchase Pension Plan, a Target Benefit Plan or any other plan at all besides the current one, which started life as a profit sharing plan in 1969 and eventually had 401(k) provisions added to it. The incoming account balance report does not have a source where MPP money or related rollovers are being tracked. It would appear that there never was any reason to have annuities as the normal form of benefit. He wants us to take out any reference to annuities and put in lump sum only. 2. Normal retirement age has been plain age 65, and he wants us to change it to the statutory definition of age 65 or the completion of 5 years of service, whichever comes later. Does anybody see either of these changes to the document as a violation of anti-cutback rules? Thank you for your thoughts.

There's a cash balance plan with the annual benefit going to the owners (HCE's) in the plan that is above their 415 limits. If their benefit is limited, the thought is to have the plan buy each of them an annuity with a X% surrender charge. This would make the taxable distribution effectively identical to the 415 limit. The annuity would be transferred to them for conversion to an IRA after IRS approval was received. We would offer this identical distribution to the other participants. Any thoughts on this?

I reach age 70 1/2 this year. I have four Individual Retirement Accounts, two of which contain Individual Retirement Annuities and nothing else. The annuities have not been annuitized. I don’t plan to annuitize them for a couple of decades. Can I add up the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from these and take the total from one of the Individual Retirement Accounts not containing an annuity and by doing so satisfy my RMD for all of the accounts and annuities? Does the fact that the annuities are in Individual Retirement Accounts make a difference?