IRA rollover into 401k plan - converting to Roth

[Santo Gold]

A participant has several pre-tax IRA's outside of the plan that he wants to roll over into the company's 401k plan. The 401k plan allows for Roth contributions. Assuming we amend it to allow for Roth conversions, can he do what he wants to do? That is, rollover over the IRA into the plan, converting them to Roth dollars at the same time?

Thanks for any advice.

[Guest Sieve]

He cannot rollover directly from a traditional IRA into a Roth account in the Plan. He must (1) rollover into the Plan, and then (2) convert--but that means he has to have a distributable event under the Plan in order to convert to Roth from his Plan account.

As of yet, there cannot be rollovers directly into a Plan's Roth account from outside the Plan, even from a Roth IRA (as best I know).

[Kevin C]

Rollover accounts can be made eligible for in-service distribution at any time. What does the plan say? Our VS document has it written into the base document that the rollover account is eligible for in-service distribution at any time. If the Plan doesn't already allow it, an amendment could allow in-service distribution of the rollover account at any time only for conversions to Roth.