Long time since plan document updated

[Santo Gold]

I am looking at an employer who maintained both an MP and a PS plan, effective back in the early 1980's. The last plan document that they have signed has an IRS advisory letter from 1985 (Pre-TRA!). We want to update the documents and then go through VCP. Do you see any problem using VCP given how long its been since their last document?

Also, can we make the jump from these 1985 document to current in 1 step (using up-to-date EGTRRA documents) or will we have to have an updated TRA document, then an updated GUST document, and then finally the EGTRRA document?

Thanks

[rcline46]

Read Rev Proc 2008-50 - see Appendix F, Schedules 1 and 2. You will have to have all of them signed.

[QNPG]

Read Rev Proc 2008-50 - see Appendix F, Schedules 1 and 2. You will have to have all of them signed.

Rcline46, I agree with your statement. It has been my experience that the IRS likes to see all interim amendments and major legislative updates such as the GUST and EGTRRA restatements signed individually.

[Guest Sieve]

I agree with the prior posts re: documentation requirements. But, no matter how old and out-of-date the doucment, VCP will work if delinquent amendments are corrected properly.

[Guest jjren]

We recently got a compliance statement for a money purchase plan that hadn't been touched since is was first adopted in 1987. There was no prior determination letter. We submitted the original document, a GUST document, interim amendments since GUST and an EGTRRA restatement. We used Appendix D rather than an F since we weren't proposing that the correction be the retroactive adoption of all the missed amendments and restatements. We proposed that the plan be deemed to have been retroactively amended to comply with TRA 86 and other changes required between TRA 86 and GUST. They approved the correction.

It's worth a shot. It could save the client a great deal of money if you don't need to re-create 20 years worth of documents. If the IRS isn't satisfied, they will ask for more documents, and you can create them at this point.

[Peter Gulia]

The rules for tax treatment as a qualified plan suppose that a participant's benefit or allocation must be determinable, and that a plan's administrator administers the plan according to the written plan.

An implication of the IRS corrections described in the preceding posts suggests that a plan that was operated consistent with then-apllicable tax law but, at least on some points, contrary to its document can be made okay.

And for a provision that isn't yet required to be stated in the form of a plan amendment or restatement but is put into effect "in operation", doesn't this way of doing things require a plan's administrator to ignore the written plan?

If the IRS's playbook tells us that it's okay to ignore the written plan whenever the IRS finds that it is or was too inconvenient to have put the plan in writing, what is left of the idea that a plan's administrator administers the plan according to the written plan?