Design Based Safe Harbors and Top Heavy

[Guest Michael S. Ouellette]

Under the EGTERRA changes a design based Safe Harbor Plan that consists of elective deferrals and Safe Harbor match or non-elective contributions only is exempt from the top heavy rules. Does this mean that an existing Plan that has made regular Match or Profit Sharing contributions in the past but is now going to fund only deferrals and Safe Harbor contributions will still have to be tested for top heavy?

[KJohnson]

Do a search on this bulletin board. I think there was a recent post from Tom Poje that the consensus at an ASPA conference was that it was a year-to-year test so you should automatically pass top-heavy. Of course, I wasn't at the conference, I may be misquoting Tom, and I don't believe that there is any formal guidance on the isue. Real helpful --right?