Pension Protection Act Blog

Aaron Juckett over at The One-Stop ESOP Blog posts a great reminder about items to look at when reviewing ESOP plan documents. In ESOP Planning: Plan Documents and Disclosures, Aaron discusses 8 questions to ask when reviewing the plan documents, including whether the plan documents are consistent with how the plan is being administered and whether the plan documents are internally consistent.

In Section 16.02 of Rev. Proc. 2005-16, the IRS included ESOPs on the list of plans that they will not issue an advisory letter to. This means that, currently, the IRS will not pre-approve ESOP plan documents as volume submitter plans. With each ESOP consisting of an individually designed plan document, summary plan description and trust document, along with any amendments to the plan document and administrative forms required to operate the plan, ESOP plan documents can quickly become internally inconsistent without careful monitoring every time an amendment or restatement is completed.

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