If a company is establishing a new ESOP (with plan year and Company fiscal year end of June 30) is there a requirement somewhere (I swear I read one and it may be a Tax Credit Employee Stock Ownership Plan requirement) that would require the trust to be funded PRIOR to the time required by 404(a)?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

No.

Perhaps you are thinking about the rule that a qualified trust must be a valid trust under state law, and that most if not all states require a trust corpus in order for it to be valid. This mix led many to believe that in order to establish a qualified trust for a plan year, there had to be at least a nominal deposit by the end of the first plan year. The IRS announced at some point that a trust will be considered a qualified trust for a year if it is a valid trust under state law other than a state law requirement that the trust have a corpus. So, no deposit need be made until the 404(a) deadline.