Plan restatements --

[Jean]

GUST is the first required plan amendment that I have had to deal with. We sponsor an M&P standardized prototype plan. If an adopting employer fails to adopt the plan by the deadline of Decemeber 31, or maybe adopts after the deadline, what is the impact to the adopting employer? Is the plan nonqualified for all the restatement years? Anyone have any experience with how the IRS addressed these types of situations in the past?

Any insight would be helpful.

[Mike Preston]

The consequences is that the client goes into the IRS in a voluntary correction to get the darn thing retroactively qualifed. Otherwise, as you indicate, it is disqualified back to the effective date of the first disqualiffying provision. Probably 1997.