Pre-participation Service

[Gary]

Questions regarding the allowance of pre-participation past service credit have been raised and I need some assistance to supplement what I have found.

For purposes of this email, we will assume the corp sponsoring the pension is either a 1 participant plan or a plan with 2 employees.

1. If a corp forms a pension it seems clear that service prior to the plan inception can be included for accrual purposes

2. If a sole prop changes to a corp (and then forms a pension at the same time), it also seems that service with the sole prop prior to plan inception can be included for accrual purposes.

The next few situations are to uncover potential limitations on this matter.

3. Say a person forms his own corp (and plan), can past service be counted from another company he owned if a) same line of work? b) different line of work?

4. Say a person owns a corp and establishes a plan, can he provide his past service with the same corp if it is in another line of work?

5. Say a person has a company that provides a service, then he is an employee of a newly created company (in addition to the other company just mentioned) that he runs and manages in its entirety (president), but does not own, can past service from the original company be counted for accrual purposes?

Items 3 and 5 seem a little dicey to me, but curious to hear opinions.

Thanks