An employee (NHCE) wants to sign an irrevocable waiver out of a safe harbor 401(k) plan before he is eligible for the plan. This plan uses a SHNEC. The plan document does allow for this. How would this affect the safe harbor rules? I cannot find any guidance in Notice 98-52 or Notice 2000-3.

my guess is there is no problem with that. conceivable once the ee has otherwise met the eligibility requirements you could fail coverage if the plan had only 2 or 3 NHCEs.