Wrong plan effective date on Form 5500

[Pension RC]

Takeover plan. Plan effective 12/1/1956. However, the 5500's have always listed the effective date as 5/1/1956. Should this be corrected going forward? Will correcting this cause the IRS to request that all of the past 5500's be amended?

Thanks for any responses!

[Belgarath]

Personally, I would not correct it going forward, and just let sleeping dogs lie. I'd keep on keeping on...

[jpod]

Did you pull the documentation from the 1950s? If not, how do you know that the effective date wasn't really May 1? Maybe a mistake was made in some subsequent document to say December 1 when it was really May 1, but that mistake just got repeated over and over again. This is just my way of saying it seems reasonable to go with what the 5500s have said consistently unless you know with absolute certainty that those 5500s are wrong.

[Lou S.]

I agree with the 2 posters above but if you want to file amended returns, knock yourself out.

[My 2 cents]

Not at all sure that if the long-ago effective date changed (staying within 1956) from one year's 5500 to the next that anyone would notice. In my wildest dreams, I could not imagine the IRS demanding that decades of 5500 filings be amended for something as meaningless as that.

I would assume that the plan document has it right. At this point, what difference could it possibly make?

What did the most recent document that got a favorable determination letter show for effective date?

[Mike Preston]

Somebody has waaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyy too much time on their hands.... I would have thought this was a post meant for 169 days from now.

[AndyH]

Truth be told all prior filings should be amended forthwith.

[david rigby]

This seems to be of little significance. jpod's advice is on target: Since these dates are "ancient", it's difficult to verify which is correct. Don't change anything until you have confirmed which is the correct date.

[jpod]

I wasn't even suggesting a scavenger hunt here. All I was suggesting was that unless it is known for an absolute fact that the effective date in the 1950s was the other date, it would be reasonable to just follow past 5500s and forget about it.