Requesting SSA Information from IRS

[Guest BWNWE]

My employer is a company which is the "offspring" of two merged companies which over the years had purchased and merged many smaller companies. These smaller companies had their own plans (ESOPs, Savings, Defined Benefit...the whole array) which they maintained for quite sometime after being acquired. At some point many of these plans were merged with the larger parent companies plans.

Upon the merger of the parent companies the two companies DC plans were merged while the companies each maintain a DB plan. The long and short of the situation is that I receive a number of letters from people who receive SSA notices informing that they may entitled to a benefit under Plan xxxxx. The reality is that anybody who is entitled to a benefit through the employer is either a participant in one of the two DB plans or the DC plan. Extensive clean-up has been conducted on the DB Plans and the Company is highly confident that all participants entitled to a benefit have been identified. On the DC side, the records have resided with a record keeper/trustee for over 20 years and so there is no issue with identifying participants entitled to benefits under the plans (unless one of the former record keepers has funds floating around in space--which they don't).

We want to clean up all SSA's attributable to the current plans and former plans. However, as is so often the case, the smaller company's did not keep good records of filings (if they filed at all) and, because this dates back to 1984--pre widespread use of electronic record keeping--there's just no way to find out who was reported as an "A" at some point and whether they were subsequently reported as a "D" upon commencement or payout of benefits.

Does anybody know if the IRS will provide a list of who their records show, by Plan number, as possibly being owed a benefit under these various plans (as in who was an "A" but never a "D" as there are no participants in these terminated/merged plans there are no participants owed a benefit).