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Premier Issue: Spring 2008—Subscribe Today! |
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The recent decision by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in the IBM cash balance litigation, reversing the notorious trial court decision, was like a breath of fresh air, blowing away the fetid odor that has been suffocating the development of cash balance pension plans ever since, three years ago, the lower court had ruled such plans inherently age discriminatory, by interpreting an undefined term ....
more...
Soon You’re Talking Real Money--Pretty Damn Soon--When New Pension Accounting Rules Take Hold
With new and potentially very costly developments bearing down on pension plan sponsors from all sides, it has become almost as difficult to figure out what poses the greatest current threat to pensions as to walk down the street in Baghdad or Tel Aviv trying to anticipate where a sniper may be lurking. By my count there are presently four matters...
more...
Pension Group Questions Treasury's Position on 'Use It or Lose It' Rules for FSAs
more....
A Numbers Game In
Congress Stalls Pension Reform and Cash Balance Legislation – Was
It Kabuki or Kabala?
For a while last month it
seemed like pension reform and cash balance relief were caught in an
intractable struggle in Congress from which they would not escape.
Not over the substance of the underlying issues, but over ....
more....
2007
Pension Limits
IRS has announced the following cost of living adjustments
applicable to the dollar limitations for retirement plans, effective
for Tax Year 2007.
more....
GAO Critiques Cash
Balance Plan Conversions
—AAA Critiques GAO Right Back
GAO-06-42 may sound to the
baby-boomer generation of moviegoers like a high-tech warrior from
Star Wars; but it is far more prosaic, being the official
designation the General Accountability Office has assigned to its
report with the understated title "Information on Cash Balance
Plans", issued in November to three congressmen who had
authored legislation .....
more....
409A
Proposed Regs Are Tour de Force
—But Grandpa Is Still In Hiding
The proposed
regulation on the nonqualified deferred compensation rules of Code
section 409A, released at the end of September, is not a page
turner (though it's a lot of pages to turn, at 238 pages); but that
didn't stop this reader from furiously .....
more....
Cash Balance
Controversy Costly to All of Us—Especially
IBM
A heated controversy has been
raging for a full year since a federal district judge in Illinois
ruled that IBMs cash balance pension plan violated the age
discrimination rules of ADEA and ERISA because of the manner in
which it, like essentially every other plan in the cash balance
format, accumulated the interest credits that are an inherent
feature of such plans. The decision in the case, Cooper v. IBM, set
off shock waves: first, in the pension .....
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Towards
a Trusty Test to Track and Tax Tax Shelters
How is one to know the bounds
of a law in a universe where no one has so far been able to draw a
generally accepted boundary line between abusive and nonabusive tax
shelters? Try this for a stab at line drawing: "A tax reducing
strategy shall not be considered not to be an abusive tax shelter
solely because tax liability has not been entirely avoided by means
of the arrangement." Or ....
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A Stitch Barely In Time more....
IBM Singing the Big Blues more....
10 or More Can Play—But You Can Get Hurt more....
Striking
a (Cash) Balance more....
A Shameful Burlesque:
From
Whence Relief for Enron's Pension Participants
more....
The Devil Is In The AMT
more....
