The Internal Revenue Service posted to its Web site Dec. 13 two notices correcting the instructions for Form 5500, Annual Return/Report of Employee Benefit Plan, and instructions for Schedule B, Actuarial Information (Form 5500), noting changes required by the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (Pub. L. No.109-280).

The Pension Protection Act changes are:

• the interest rate used in calculating a plan's current liability; and

• special funding relief for certain defined benefit plans of commercial passenger airlines or catering services to commercial passenger airlines, which allows eligible plans to be funded according to an alternative 17-year amortization of unfunded liabilities.

IRS said taxpayers who downloaded the Form 5500 instructions and/or the Schedule B prior to Dec. 13 may have incorrect versions and should download them again.

IRS said changes to the Form 5500 instructions (and Schedule B) include:

• Page 4: requirements for automatic extensions to file Form 5500, and the warning that the time period cannot be further extended by filing Form 5558, nor can it be extended beyond a total of 91/2 months beyond the close of the plan year.

• Page 8 (Small Pension Plan) and Page 9 (Large Pension Plan): “Schedule SSA (only one page with as many pages 2 as needed), to report separated vested participant information, if applicable;”

• Pages 24 and 25(and Pages 2 and 4 of Schedule B): Specific instructions for calculating a plan's current liability;

• Page 31 (and Page 9 of Schedule B): a new section, “Special Instructions for Plans Utilizing Alternative 17-Year Funding Schedule for Airlines,” is added.

The revised version of the 2006 Instructions for Form 5500, Annual Return/Report of Employee Benefit Plan, is at http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i5500.pdf.

The revised version of the 2006 Instructions for Schedule B (Form 5500), Actuarial Information, is at http:www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i5500sb.pdf.