Possible Conrolled Group - Shared Employees

Three dentists share office space as well as a few employees.

Clearly this is a controlled group.

One of the dentists split - moved his practice to another location and is now totally unrelated to the others

One or two of the employees now work for this dentist part-time as well for two of the three remaining tests part-time as well.

Since this is not a controlled group situation - common control is 33.33% - must the part-time employee still be counted and receive a contribution from either plan?

What?  No, it is NOT clearly a controlled group.  In fact, in might be three different practices with what are called shared employees.  

Are they a single partnership or corporation? Or are they three separate businesses?  Your commentary sounds more like three separate entities.

I hope you have access to Derrin Watson's Who's The Employer http://employerbook.com/ .

You can read all about shared employees there.  Full disclosure: I have had a hand in developing and marketing that book in its early years; Derrin was one of my partners.

Larry.

I had always thought this was NOT a controlled group, but indeed shared employees, as you say.

One of those online answer groups mentioned shared employees, and I had been pointed to RR 67-101

My question is, if she works for the dentist who has severed his relationship with the others a few years ago and moved his office to another location, as well as working for one of the other dentists, is she no longer considered a shared employee and can be excluded from the plan of the dentist who broke all ties with the others.

I believe so, but I am not sure.

A shared employee is one who, for example, works in an office of two independent dentists who share office space. When she is working, it is not possible to tell who she is working for since she answers the phone for both docs.  When she leaves that shared office space and is now working exclusively for one doc, she is not a shared employee as it relates to that doc.  She might be a part timer who doesn't qualify (whereas, in the shared office she was full time but split between three docs and was therefore in all of their plans for her total hours but attributed compensation individually).  Sounds like she now has two part time jobs in two totally unrelated entities.

That is the conclusion I arrived at, just double checking, to be sure we don't run into problems down the road by excluding the employee.

Thanks, Larry.