IRS announces key deadlines for preapproved defined benefit plans 

IRS Announcement 2023-6 gives employers using preapproved defined benefit (DB) plans until March 31, 2025, to adopt a newly approved document reflecting changes in qualification requirements included on the 2020 Cumulative List. This date marks the end of the third remedial amendment cycle for preapproved DB plans (extended from Jan. 31, 2025).

The process for adopting employers begins Feb. 28, when IRS will issue opinion letters to DB plan providers that timely submitted documents for the third remedial amendment cycle. During the third cycle, an adopting employer can rely on the provider’s opinion letter as if it were the employer’s own. Employers modifying a preapproved document lose reliance on the opinion letter (unless they make only certain approved modifications) but may be eligible to apply for their own determination letter from April 1, 2023, through March 31, 2025.
 

• Employers making nonextensive changes to a nonstandardized plan (i.e., a plan in which not all provisions are safe harbor) may apply for a determination letter using Form 5307, Application for Determination for Adopters of Modified Volume Submitter Plans. (This form hasn’t been updated to reflect 2017 changes to the preapproved plan program that eliminated the Volume Submitter and Master & Prototype nomenclature.) Employers of any preapproved plan document (standardized or nonstandardized) also use Form 5307 if the only modification is the addition of language to satisfy Internal Revenue Code Sections 415 and 416 due to the required aggregation of plans. IRS will review applications filed on a Form 5307 against the 2020 Cumulative List.
  
  
• Employers making extensive changes to a nonstandardized document or any changes to a standardized document are treated as having adopted an individually designed plan. These employers can apply for a determination letter using Form 5300, Application for Determination for Employee Benefit Plan, if they haven’t already received an initial determination as an individually designed plan. IRS will review nonstandardized plans against the 2020 Cumulative List and standardized plans against the Required Amendments List issued two calendar years before the application’s submission date.

Related resources

• Announcement 2023-6 (IRS, Feb. 8, 2023)
• Rev. Proc. 2023-4 (IRS, Jan. 3, 2023)
• Notice 2020-14, 2020 Cumulative List (IRS, March 6, 2020)