The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that it intends to expand
its pre-approved defined benefit plan program to permit plans with certain cash
balance features to be submitted by sponsors and practitioners.
Prior to this announcement,
adopters of Cash Balance Pension Plans were required to adopt individually
designed Plan documents and then file them with the IRS for approval. The new
rules allow Cash Balance adopters to use a pre-approved document, thereby eliminating
the IRS filing in the vast majority of cases. This affects Plans adopted in the
last 12 months as well as those in the future.
For one-person Plans, the IRS filing fee was $2,500 and additionally
required preparation of a complex set of forms to be filed with the IRS. Practitioners
and mass document preparers have been asking the IRS for this process for at
least two years.
In Announcement 2014-4, the IRS
extended to February 2, 2015, the deadline to submit on-cycle applications for
opinion and advisory letters for pre-approved defined benefit plans for the
plans’ second six-year remedial amendment cycle. The submission deadline has
been extended to allow time for the agency to develop the necessary language
and tools to implement its expansion of the pre-approved program. However, new
deadline applies to all on-cycle pre-approved defined benefit plan submissions,
even those that will not be modified to contain cash balance features.
In general, plans will continue
to be reviewed for qualification items based on the 2012 Cumulative List (see “IRS Issues 2012 Cumulative List”), which
is the Cumulative List applicable to sponsors of defined benefit pre-approved
plans submitting during the second six-year remedial amendment cycle. Future
guidance will address permissible cash balance features under the pre-approved
program.
The IRS said it will announce in
future guidance when applications for opinion and advisory letters for
pre-approved defined benefit plans with cash balance features may be submitted.
Until that time, such plans should not be submitted under the pre-approved
program.
In order to preserve (or, in the
case of a new plan, obtain) reliance on the terms of their plans, sponsors of
individually designed plans who intend to adopt a pre-approved defined benefit
plan document in the future may, before the end of their applicable
individually designed on-cycle deadline, complete Form 8905, Certification of
Intent to Adopt a Pre-approved Plan, in lieu of submitting an application for
an individually designed determination letter. The deadline for submitting the
form is March 31, 2014.