Plan Merger

[justatester]

I have received direction from a client that seems a bit strange...

Plan A: was acquried in 2009 the participants began participating in Plan B on 2/20/2010. Plan A uses prior year..Plan B uses current year.

Client wants to test HCES under Plan A with full year comp/contribution using the prior year method. Plan thinks need to test full comp/contrib because of HCE aggregation rules. Of course that plan fails. Then they want to test HCEs from plan A using full year comp/contribs in Plan B's test, but only include Plan A's NHCEs from 2/20/10 through 12/31/10. The plan sponsor thinks that can't run one full year test because of the different testing methods. BTW, all assets from plan A were completely merged in prior to 12/31/10.

Is there any reason they can't just run 1 test for all of plan A & B as of 12/31/10?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!