Controlled group of Dr.'s & Staff Plan - Dr. eligibility

Doctors' group has one main 401(k) plan for staff and each doctor has separate plan (due to historically having separate plans even though plan provisions and investment opportunities presently mimic the main plan).

Eligibility requires 1 yr of svc.

I'm wondering -  can a doctor start their own plan in the year of hire and make contributions to that plan even though they would not have been eligible to make contributions in the main plan?

Could have sworn the first word of the subject was control, not controlled.  So, forget the rest of this paragraph. Pet peeve: there is no such thing as a control group, unless you are talking about a scientific experiment. Repeat after me: controlled group, controlled group.  Not so hard, huh? But the way things are going for me today somebody is going to find some authoritative publication that uses the offending phrase!  Serve me right for picking on the equivalent of grammar on the internet.

Back to the question: no.  It would fail all 401a4 and 410b tests.

not sure what you mean?

19 minutes ago, TPApril said:

not sure what you mean?

Better now?

9 hours ago, Mike Preston said:

Back to the question: no.  It would fail all 401a4 and 410b tests.

Wouldn’t this depend on the actual demographics in the given year?  The plans would need coverage tested on the shortest eligibility period.  So if the group plan was excluding more than 30% of NHCEs due to 1 YOS, and the doc plan has immediate eligibility, it would fail the ratio test. But if all NHCEs were in and no new hires waiting to get in, coverage would pass?

Is the new doctor a 5% owner? If not then they would be NHCE in their year of hire.

I assume (maybe incorrectly) since the title of the thread is "controlled group" that it is really an affiliated service group partnership of professional corporations.  So each doc has a separate 100% owned PC.  So the doc is an HCE due to ownership of the PC stock.  Assuming the PC is a partner in the group it's an ASG.  OTOH, if the doc has a separate PC and neither the doc nor the PC has ownership in the group, it wouldn't be an ASG or CG.

If all the docs are directly employed by the group then you are right the doc is not HCE unless also a 5% owner. 

To channel Larry Starr, we can't really answer properly without complete facts. 

4 hours ago, shERPA said:

Wouldn’t this depend on the actual demographics in the given year?  The plans would need coverage tested on the shortest eligibility period.  So if the group plan was excluding more than 30% of NHCEs due to 1 YOS, and the doc plan has immediate eligibility, it would fail the ratio test. But if all NHCEs were in and no new hires wreed.aiting to get in, coverage would pass?

Agreed.

Is Larry OK?

2 hours ago, Dave Baker said:

Is Larry OK?

Yes.

Is Blinky OK?