Redeposit of Stale Checks

[TBob]

I have read many of the posts on the message boards dealing with stale checks and how to handle them. Needless to say, there are a several different schools of thought out there. Assume that a TPA is informed by the custodian/trustee that a plan has a stale dated, uncashed check. Further assume that they intend to redeposit to the trust. The TPA has to put the $$ back into the participants account until the participant can be found (or until they have made reasonable efforts to find them).

The question is, how would you include this deposit back to the plan on the Form 5500? Would this be offset against current distributions? What if that creates a net negative distribution on the schedule I/H? Also, is there any agreement out there as to how to handle the original tax reporting. One previous post mentions redepositing it as "after-tax" and leave the tax reporting stand. Does anyone agree/disagree with this?

[JanetM]

Since our four plans are large we don't face a distribution issue on 5500. We do net redeposits to distributions. We leave original tax reporting as is and when we do find the participant the distribution is made after tax.