- 72 - arrangement and the adoption agreement signed by each employer were very similar to an arrangement and adoption agreement used by separate employers' establishing a separate plan under the terms of a master plan; (6) each employer selected its employees' level of benefits, vesting schedule, and minimum participation requirements, separate and apart from the selections made by the other employers; (7) each employer's contribution benefited primarily its employees, and not the employees of other employers; (8) the Trust Agreement provided rules under which an employee's benefits would be reduced in the event of a shortfall, and without subsidy from the Trust as a whole; and (9) the Prime Plan did not pool all claim risks within the Trust. Petitioners' argument focuses mainly on the fact that a single trust serviced multiple employers. Their argument ignores the fact that the account of each participating employer was kept separate from that of every other employer, and, most importantly, that an employer's contributions benefited primarily its own Employee Group. The applicability of section 419A(f)(6) does not rest on whether more than nine employers contribute to a single trust. Section 419A(f)(6) requires a single plan, the existence of which is not established by Prime's sponsorship of a program under which multiple employers contribute to a single trust. But for the fact that a single promoter formed a common trust and offered many employers the ability to enroll in a program that was administered by a common overseer, we findPage: Previous 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011