Pension Protection Act Blog

New information today from the IRS, PBGC and the Government Printing Office.
Today, the IRS released Revenue Procedure 2007-37, setting forth the procedure that a sponsor of a defined benefit plan, other than a multiemployer plan, can request and obtain approval for the use of plan-specific mortality tables. This revenue procedure contains specific […]

[Read more →]

Last Friday, May 27th, President Bush signed into law the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, 2007 (Public Law 110-28). This Act was H.R. 2206, and will be remembered for increasing the minimum wage and providing for funding for the war in Iraq. The Act also contained […]

[Read more →]

This week around the Employee Benefits world:
The IRS released 2 corrections to the Final 415 Regulations. The first made some corrections to the revised Treas. Regs. 1.415(b)-1, 1.415(d)-1, 1.415(f)-1, and 1.457-5. The second correction was to correct a typo - “On page 16883, column 2, in the preamble, under the paragraph heading “C. […]

[Read more →]

The new immigration bill, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1348), raises another question. If alien, or undocumented, workers are recognized as employees for qualified plan purposes in plans which previously did not recognize them as eligible employees, what service will count for vesting purposes?
I think the answer is to this question […]

[Read more →]

The IRS has issued Final Regulations on Distributions From a Pension Plan on Attainment of Normal Retirement Age, which permit employees to take distributions from retirement plans once they reach retirement age but are still employed by the employer. These types of distributions are also referred to as distributions during phased retirement or working […]

[Read more →]

An update to the previous post about patenting plan designs - on May 17th, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA) introduced H.R. 2365, a bill to limit damages arising from infringing on a patent for tax planning methods. With a couple of tax method patents pending before the U.S. Patent & Trademark office, including at least […]

[Read more →]

I am the first to admit that immigration is not my area of expertise. I am a pension geek. The Sunday morning talk shows devoted a lot of talk this morning to this new immigration bill. What caught my attention was a mention that the new bill will impact Social Security. […]

[Read more →]

This week around the employee benefits world:
Susan Mangiero of Pension Risk Matters discusses ‘Til Jail Do Us Part? How Much Do You Know About Your Money Manager.
Amy Howe at SCOTUSBlog, in Invitation Brief in No. 06-273, Cox v. DaimlerChrysler Corp. mentions an invitation brief has been filed with the Supreme Court of the […]

[Read more →]

Yesterday was a reminder about the 3-year vesting schedule for cash balance plans. Today is a look at the design requirements for cash balance plans contained in Section 701 of the Pension Protection Act.
Identifying the design requirements does not start with Section 701 of PPA, it actually starts with IRS Notice 2007-6, which enumerates […]

[Read more →]

There have been a lot of reminders about the vesting changes for non-elective contributions made by the Pension Protection Act. Today, in reviewing the cash balance design requirements contained in Section 701 of PPA, I was reminded about the change in vesting requirements for cash balance plans.
In Notice 2007-6, the IRS clarified […]

[Read more →]