Prior Opinion Letter Cannot Be Produced

[Dougsbpc]

A small DB plan was adopted 1/1/2001 and was restated for GUST 1/1/2002. However, the prior opinion letter from 1/1/2001 cannot be located. Prior administrator went out of business.

The plan will now be terminated and will be submitted for a DL.

Does anyone think the IRS will require the opinion letter for the prior document (1/1/2001)? If it cannot be produced will they consider the initial plan as individually designed?

We do have an opinion letter for the GUST restatement as of 1/1/2002.

Both documents are volume plans.

[SheilaD]

A small DB plan was adopted 1/1/2001 and was restated for GUST 1/1/2002. However, the prior opinion letter from 1/1/2001 cannot be located. Prior administrator went out of business.

The plan will now be terminated and will be submitted for a DL.

Does anyone think the IRS will require the opinion letter for the prior document (1/1/2001)? If it cannot be produced will they consider the initial plan as individually designed?

We do have an opinion letter for the GUST restatement as of 1/1/2002.

Both documents are volume plans.

In order to issue the opinion letter for the GUST restatement the IRS had to review the prior document and/or opinion letter. The IRS will only ask for the most recent opinion letter so I think you are in the clear.

FYI I had an instance where I knew the most recent document had been submitted to the IRS but could not find the letter. When I submitted for a new letter the IRS was able to locate the old letter for me. I don't know if I was just lucky or if this was representative of the IRS's capability.

[Dougsbpc]

Sheila,

Thanks for the info.

I may not have provided enough information in my post.

When the plan was restated for GUST it was not submitted for a Determination Letter. The document provider received approval for the Volume Submitter document used in the restatement process. Perhaps I should have referred to the letter as the approval letter rather than the opinion letter.

So we are looking at submitting the plan for a determination letter upon plan termination. We have a volume document approval letter for the GUST restated document, but not the prior volume document initially adopted.

[Kevin C]

This may seem like a silly question, but are you sure the prior administrator and the document provider are the same company?

We are a TPA and use prototypes and VS documents for our clients. The prototypes we use are re-registered under our name. For GUST, you could not re-register VS documents. I think that was something new for the EGTRRA documents. I just did a search on the Word files of GUST VS documents from two different document providers and the document provider's name does not appear in the document. If it is the same with your 2001 document, there may still be hope of getting a copy of the approval letter if you can figure out who the document provider was.

[SheilaD]

Sheila,

So we are looking at submitting the plan for a determination letter upon plan termination. We have a volume document approval letter for the GUST restated document, but not the prior volume document initially adopted.

I would think that if you know the volume document sponsor the IRS can locate the letter. Otherwise they will probably want to review that document as part of the termination review. If you are relatively sure that the document was truly a volume submitter - there is hope that the document will 'pass muster'.