Attack of the alien plan document

[Guest Hilarion]

Our prototype program has operated on basically the same plan document since ERISA. It needed to be amended/restated for GUST. Outside counsel was hired (a member of the Board is a partner in the firm), and we were promised a plan that would be 110% better than before.

We got the IRS-approved result in late December. The new plan is chock-full of egregious errors, 411(d)(6) violations, internal inconsistencies, misspellings, typos, etc. How this happened is a long story, but we who must service and administer the program must work with the results. We have prepared a list of must-resolve issues to transmit to the law firm that was responsible for this botch, but what none of us knows is this:

Are technical corrections amendments possible in an M&P plan that has received its IRS opinion letters? Is there a deadline? (We have not contacted our clients yet about GUST requalification, and the opinion letters were issued 11/30/01, so time is of the essence.)

Thanks!

[jpod]

I suggest that you contact John Swieca in the IRS' National Office (I believe he is still in charge of the m&p program to a significant degree.)

Better yet, you should have outside counsel (presumably, different counsel) who knows his/her way around prototype plans and issues confronting prototype providers contact Swieca on your behalf, so that counsel does not have to identify your company or your plans right off the bat. There may be a way for you to correct your new documentation on a streamlined basis without risking the validity of your new opinion letter(s).