I am trying to get a sense of whether state university medical systems (to the extent they sponsor retirement plans of their own) typically seek and obtain status as governmental employers under Code Section 414(d). I understand that in each case, it will depend on how a system is organized under state law, but am interested in any actual experiences anyone has had with this.

If you have any experience or insight into this, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you.

Thanks!

There are a lot of PLRs dealing with whether a state university qualifed for common paymaster status under section 125 of the 1983 Social Security Act. There is at last one PLR revoking an earlier PLR when the IRS figured out that a hospital affiliated with a state medical school was actually a private hospital.

Most state universities are not incorporated. They are divisions of a state, similar to the highway department. If the medical system is part of the state, its status as a governmental employer is probably not an issue.

If the system is incorporated, it may be an instrumentality, in which case the facts are very important, and somebody should figure out what the institution's status is (because the IRS will ask if it audits the place).

There are some eastern schools that were incorporated prior to the adoption of the Constitution, the status of which raises some very interesting questions.