The plan excludes partners from participation. One associate was promoted to partnership on Oct. 1. The plan provides for a discretionary profit sharing contribution to all eligible participants who complete 1,000 hours during the year and are employed on the last day of the plan year (which is the calendar year). Can we allocate a PS contribution to the associate based on his earnings from January 1 through September 30, or is the participant excluded because he already was a partner as of the last day of the plan year? The plan document is silent with respect to how to deal with EE's who are participants and then become part of an excluded class. (It is in individually designed plan.)

DB plan does not allow distribution prior to NRA, nor does it allow for lump sums (don't ask me why; it's a convoluted individually designed document). Normal benefit is regular single life annuity, with 50% JS for married participants. Plan has several participants that need RMD but they can't be located, or in some instances they won't respond. Question: because the plan does not know the participant's marital status, how can it calculate the annuity and thus the RMD amount? The document is silent. The plan's actuary isn't willing to calculate any sort of RMD without knowing marital status and date of birth. The financial institution isn't willing to process any sort of RMD without participant consent. If it were a 401(k) plan and I didn't know the spouse's date of birth (or even that the participant had a spouse) I would just calculate and have the plan make a payment based solely on the participant's DOB. But the actuary doesn't want to calculate the RMD based on a single life annuity without actually knowing, so I'm a bit at a loss as to how to handle this.

Is there any guidance on how to administer a plan amendment that changes the method for crediting service from equivalencies to actual hours, or do we just give all employees the greater of the two?

Assume a NQDC participant works in a state with income taxes and retires to a tax-free state. She has two accounts within her deferred comp plan: a 10-year account, paying her $100k per year beginning in the year after retirement. The second account is a lump-sum account, paying out $50k in the year after retirement. She'll receive all the payments while residing in the no-tax state. Question: is there state income tax liability on the $50k lump sum from the source state? Instead of a lump sum, what if she had a 5-year installment of $50k per year -- would that be treated separately from the 10-year payment stream as well? Asked differently, is the 10-year rule interpreted to mean only specific accounts with at least a 10-year stream (or longer) within an employer's NQDC plan are taxed at the retirement state's income tax rate? Or is the rule interpreted more broadly, meaning that as long as a combination of accounts within an employers' NQDC plan payout for 10 years or more, then all the payments are exempt from source state income taxation?