Testing Age

[Blinky the 3-eyed Fish]

I am permissively aggregating 2 plans for coverage and nondiscrimination. The plans happen to be a DB and a DC, although I don't believe that is important. Both plans define normal retirement age as the later of age 65 or 5 years of participation. Because one of the plans existed before the other, I have a case where some older people have different normal retirement ages.

Therefore, my question is when I run the general test, what testing age do I use?

[AndyH]

I don't know if there is a right or wrong answer, but I'd be inclined to separately calculate the percentages as permitted under 1.401(a)(4)-9 and add the results together, even though they have different testing ages, provided it wouldn't affect PASS/FAIL. How can somebody prove that to be "wrong"?

Or I suppose you could normalize the older one to age 65 instead.

[Blinky the 3-eyed Fish]

I have actually been leaning to what is described in 1.401(a)(4)-12 - (2) of the testing age definition. I am thinking I could consider the 2 plans as different uniform normal retirement ages and test using the latest of the two ages.

Fortunately, the people being considered are inherently older and do not generally affect the outcome of the testing, but still it's nice to do things correctly, if there is such a thing.

[Mike Preston]

I somehow feel that that -12 approach is what the IRS intended. But it certainly isn't clear.