Plan Termination

[Gary]

A client has a DB plan that he wants to terminate.

The plan was effective around 2002 or so.

Over the years the attorney may or may not have kept up with all required amendments, such as GUST, EGTRRA, PFEA, PPA, HEART, WRERA and so forth.

My thought is to restate and terminate the plan using the approved Sungard Relius document with all pertinent amendments in the plan and of course the salient plan provisions re: plan formul included, instead of trying to patch the old plan with various amendments.

The approach of using a Sungard document with their approved and/or current amendments seems like a clean and efficient technique without trying to sort through the old document and its amendments or lack thereof.

Does this seem like an acceptable approach?

Thanks.

[Andy the Actuary]

Sounds great but what are you going to argue if the IRS requests all of the plan documents and complying amendments?

[Gary]

I would provide them with the prior plan document and all amendments.

Thus the plan would be current and compliant in form at the time of termination, even if it is possible that it did not have all up to date amendments prior to plan termination. It may have all necessary amendments, but it is just a little tedious to reconcile.

Thanks.

[mwyatt]

Gary, assume that you don't have a Determination Letter on the document (original doc was prototype or volume submitter). Therefore, under the instructions to the 5310, you have to submit everything back to inception, in order. I'd make sure my "ducks are in a row" before filing. Current restatement is an OK idea, but you are still going to have to submit original stuff back to inception since no DL.

At the EA meeting, Rich Hochman was actually advocating that with the upcoming EGTRRA goaround that you in fact submit for a DL, even if prototype or VS, since that would force you to make sure everything is clean up to date and you would have a DL that would stop past references to older documents. Not sure I quite go along with it, but think in 2016 having to make sure that a client has everything available all the way back to the TRA '86 restatement.