GUST amendment Time Frames

[Guest Fuzzy]

A TPA just told me that; "DATAIR prototypes AND volume submitter documents have until late next year to complete their GUST amendment and restatements!!"

This person also stated; "turns out the due date for the GUST amendment and restatements does not start being calculated until the Document Sponsor (DATAIR in this case) has received ALL their letters from the IRS. So, we have until 12 months after they get their last letter to get the GUSTs done.

I need confirmation/opinions on this. Is this true?

[Guest jvanheyde]

Nothing specific on DATAIR, but at the ASAP Summer Academy in San Diego, I do recall one of the government speakers saying that the one year period for a sponsor does not begin to run until the last of their letters is issued.

[Guest jody303]

We use Datair's documents and the last we heard was that they still do not have all of their approval letters. Therefore, the GUST RAP will not end for Datair document users until at least late 2003.

Remember, in order to use the "Datair extended RAP", the plan must currently be using a pre-GUST Datair document OR the plan sponsor must have signed a certification, and Datair must have cosigned that certification to use one of Datair's documents by no later than the end of the regular RAP.

It appears to me that the authority for this position is contained in IRS Announcement 2001-6. (See Q&A #4.)

[david rigby]

Could this be relevant?

http://benefitslink.com/IRS/revproc2002-73.shtml

[KJohnson]

PAX and JudY303 are both right. Everyone who either adopted or signed a certificate for a volume submitter or M&P Plan now has until 9/30/2003 (assuming a timely adoption of the certificate or non-GUST Plan and assuming the sponsor sought a GUST letter by 12/31/00).

However, you may have even later than that if DATAIR has not received its letter for its DB Plan or some other Plan. Judy303 gave you the right reference for this proposition. Unfortunately the IRS mis-numbered the notice when it first came out and it it is actually now 2001-12 and can be found here:

http://www.benefitslink.com/IRS/ann2001-12.shtml

You can see the list of porotype/volume submitter sponsors and when they got their letters on the various plans here:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-tege/mplist.pdf