"Company A merges with Company B. Company A and Company B have 401(k) plans. Company B terminates their 401(k) plan. There are 5 employees total in company B, 2 of the 5 employees transfer into Company A's 401(k) plan but 3 of the employees take a cash distribution. There is also a parent company, and they want to be conservative and file VCP for the failure. How would you present this for correction under VCP?"

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"DB/DC combo, plan needs to make DC allocations for 2022. Plan sponsor's assets were sold/employees terminated in 2022. DC plan has been already terminated, though, and everyone's paid out, maybe except for one straggler. There's concern their big former DC separate recordkeeper would balk about opening the plan back up after termination/payouts. Anyway, the "interesting part" concerns whether or not the sponsor can just start up a separate DC plan, retroactive to 2022, to receive these allocations for the testing. This regulation seems to preclude distribution upon the termination of a plan when the sponsor's going to set up another plan within 12 months. The thing is, in this case, all the employees' distributions are contingent upon their termination of employment with the Seller. And the owner has a distributable event upon age 59½. So none of these distributions seem to have the plan termination as the distributable event - does that mean a successor DC plan is going to be okay after all?"

"We recently took over a DB/401(k) from a firm by the name of Pensions & Forecasting, Inc., 4201 Avenue M, Brooklyn NY 11234. They are unresponsive to any requests, but the 5500s including Schedule SB actuarial, seems to be timely prepared. Client says they have no records (of course); FeEx has not been able to deliver our letter for plan documents, etc. What does one usually do under these circumstances. I have never run across this. Other than telling the client I can not work on the case without this documentation, what is the suggestion?"

"I help oversee a 401(k) Split Plan. There is several complexities to the Plan which is why is makes me harder to administer. Trying to determine which book is best to purchase. The options I believe I have is the ERISA Outline Book or the 401(k) Answer Book by Empower. Both are super expensive so weighing options."