ERISA 4204 Sale of Assets

[Guest arasalin]

I have been reviewing a sale of assets transaction, and I noted that the 4204 Sale of Assets language specifically limits the purchaser's withdrawal liability for the purchased operations to the liability calculated using only the last 5 years of contribution history for the operations. For most plans that use the presumptive method, adding up an employer's propotional share of UVB pools for each year in the last 20 based on the employer's proportional share for that year, this would wipe out up to 15 years of UVB pools that the seller would have had included in its withdrawal liability for a purchaser of the seller's business.

It doesn't seem like the result the statute is going for, if the goal is to ensure the stability of the plan, why exclude up to 75% of the UVB pools used in calculating the seller's WL when assessing the purchaser of those operations?

Is my reading correct? Is there any guidance confirming this reading? Thanks.