IRS Clarifies Amendment Deadlines for SECURE and SECURE 2.0 Plan Amendments

On September 18, 2026, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) published guidance in an Employee Plans newsletter (the “IRS Newsletter”) clarifying that the amendment deadlines applicable to plan changes required or permitted by the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 (the “SECURE Act”) and the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (“SECURE 2.0”) are not all December 31, 2026, as many plan sponsors and practitioners previously assumed. Instead, the deadlines depend on whether an amendment is required or discretionary: most amendments relating to discretionary changes that plans have already implemented operationally must be adopted by December 31, 2026, but later deadlines apply to many of the required amendments.

Background

The SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0 introduced a number of changes to the rules governing retirement plans, including new requirements for automatic enrollment, expanded coverage for long-term part-time employees, updates to required minimum distribution rules, and new distribution options. Some of these changes are mandatory while others are optional. To give plan sponsors time to update plan documents, Section 601 of the original SECURE Act provided a general amendment deadline of the last day of the first plan year beginning on or after January 1, 2022.

This deadline was extended a few times, including through Section 501 of SECURE 2.0 which extended and consolidated this deadline to the end of the first plan year beginning on or after January 1, 2025 (or 2027 for certain governmental and collectively bargained plans). The IRS subsequently extended most of these deadlines through Notice 2024-2, setting December 31, 2026 as the general deadline for adopting amendments. Plan sponsors have thus been operating with the understanding that December 31, 2026 is the deadline to adopt all SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0 amendments.

Updated Deadline Guidance

In the IRS Newsletter, the agency clarified that December 31, 2026 is not a universal deadline. Instead, it is the deadline to adopt optional plan amendments that plan sponsors elected to implement, whereas the deadline to adopt required amendments will be governed by the IRS’s annual Required Amendments List (“RA List”), per Rev. Proc. 2022-40.

Required Amendments

Required amendments implement changes that plans must make to maintain their tax-qualified status. Deadlines to implement required amendments generally follow the annual RA List and are generally the end of the second year after the change appears on that list. In the IRS Newsletter, the IRS explains that if the Treasury Department and the IRS have not yet issued guidance needed to implement a new requirement, then an amendment will not be included on the RA List until that guidance is applicable.

Because final regulations for a number of SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0 provisions have only recently been issued or remain outstanding, the IRS explained that plan amendments to adopt those provisions do not need to be adopted by December 31, 2026. For example, the IRS explained that the Roth catch-up requirements in Section 603 of SECURE 2.0 “are expected to appear on the 2027 RA List (when the final Roth catch-up regulations generally become applicable), and, accordingly, the amendment deadline for those requirements generally will be December 31, 2029.”

The IRS also listed the following SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0 provisions for which it expects to issue final regulations, and which will not appear on an RA List until it does:

• Automatic enrollment requirements imposed by Section 101 of SECURE 2.0;
• Long-term part-time requirements imposed by Section 125 of the SECURE Act and Section 112 of SECURE 2.0; and
• Required minimum distribution requirements imposed by the SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0 provisions that have not already appeared on an RA List.

Discretionary Amendments

Discretionary amendments add features that are permitted, but not required, by law. Changes in law permitting discretionary plan provisions will not appear on an RA List. The IRS Newsletter explained that this generally means that the deadline to adopt discretionary amendments is the last day of the plan year in which the discretionary provisions are operationally put into effect under the plan. However, as noted above, the IRS has extended the deadline to adopt discretionary amendments under the SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0 to December 31, 2026 (with later deadlines applying to amendments permitting qualified long-term care distributions and with regard to governmental, collectively bargained, and public school plans).

Since the SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0 were passed, many plan sponsors have elected to implement some or all of the optional provisions. For example, plan sponsors have permitted plan participants to take qualified birth or adoption and emergency expense distributions, have allowed participants to elect to receive matching contributions as Roth contributions, and/or made matching contributions on student loan repayments. Plan sponsors that have implemented these or other discretionary amendments must adopt corresponding plan amendments by December 31, 2026 (subject to the later deadlines noted above).

Required/Discretionary Amendment Chart

The following chart summarizes key SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0 provisions and their current amendment deadlines. It distinguishes between required amendments, which generally follow the RA List process, and discretionary amendments.