Increased funding for profit sharing plan

[Guest ama]

EGTRRA amended section 404(a)(3) to increase the amount of deductible contributions to a profit sharing plan from 15% of compensation to 25%. This change elimates the need for both a profit sharing and money purchase pension plan. Does anyone have any thoughts on whether it would be better to merge the two plans or to terminate the money purchase plan and allow participants to make rollovers into the profit sharing plan? My specific concerns are as follows:

I believe merger would subject the profit sharing plan to the qualified joint and survivor annuity requirements. However, I believe a merger would probably be more cost effective than a termination, especially if a favorable determination letter is sought.

Finally, if the profit sharing plan does not permit rollovers, could it be amended to permit rollovers only from the specific terminated money purchase plan?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

[RCK]

My standard disclaimer: I work for a plan sponsor, with a lot of plans that we inherited in acquisitions ( I think we're down to 28).

We have gotten to the point that we look for any way that we can eliminate a plan via merger instead of termination (we will always file for a determination letter). The cost and hassle of the termination process is generally much worse than an inconvenience of a merger. In your case, assuming that you have roughly the same population in both plans, I don't see why having the Joint and Survivor requirement apply to a larger account is much of a problem.

On the other question, I think that you could restrict rollovers to those coming from a particular plan. You could always do the sneakier approach of allowing rollovers from any plan for the period that you are makidn distributions from the MP plan. As soon as the MP distributions are completed, you stop accepting rollovers.