ASPPA

401(k) Operations Support
American Pension Advisors, Ltd.
in IN

DC Plan Administrator
Karel-Gordon & Associates
in IL

Senior Implementation Project Manager
The Newport Group
in ANY STATE

Operations Specialist
Professional Capital Services
in PA

Project Manager
Verisight, Inc.
in CA

Benefits Systems Implementation Specialist
Northwestern Benefit Corporation of Georgia
in GA

Retirement Operations Analyst I
CUNA Mutual Group
in WI

Retirement Operations Analyst II
CUNA Mutual Group
in WI

Post Your Job

View All Jobs

RSS Feed: All Jobs

Experience Synergies360
June 3, 2013 in PA
(Corporate Synergies)

Tax Forms Workshop: 5500 and More - Atlanta
June 18, 2014 in GA
(SunGard Relius)

PPA Pre-Approved Plans Workshop - Corbel and PPD Documents - Atlanta
June 19, 2014 in GA
(SunGard Relius)

View All Webcasts and Conferences

Text of OPM Notice: Federal Employees' Retirement System; Normal Cost Percentages
"The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is providing notice of revised normal cost percentages for employees covered by the Federal Employees' Retirement System (FERS) Act of 1986.... The revised normal cost percentages are effective at the beginning of the first pay period commencing on or after October 1, 2014. Agency appeals of the normal cost percentages must be filed no later than November 21, 2014." [Federal Register Doc. 2014-11771, May 21, 2014 issue.] (Office of Personnel Management [OPM])

[Advert.]

FREE! A full year of 5500/PBGC/1099R Forms. Effortless conversion!

Click here to sign up today. Use DATAIR's Pension Reporter System for your 2013 filings. NO obligation, NO fees. Just the best government forms software for an entire year. Call us at 888-328-2474 with any questions. We are here to help!

Text of OPM Notice: Federal Employees' Retirement System; Present Value Factors
"The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is providing notice of adjusted present value factors applicable to retirees who elect to provide survivor annuity benefits to a spouse based on post-retirement marriage, and to retiring employees who elect the alternative form of annuity or elect to credit certain service with nonappropriated fund instrumentalities. This notice is necessary to conform the present value factors to changes in the economic and demographic assumptions adopted by the Board of Actuaries of the Civil Service Retirement System.... The revised present value factors apply to survivor reductions or employee annuities that commence on or after October 1, 2014." [Federal Register Doc. 2014-11756, May 21, 2014 issue.] (Office of Personnel Management [OPM])

Text of OPM Notice: Civil Service Retirement System; Present Value Factors
"The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is providing notice of adjusted present value factors applicable to retirees under the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) who elect to provide survivor annuity benefits to a spouse based on post-retirement marriage and to retiring employees who elect the alternative form of annuity, owe certain redeposits based on refunds of contributions for service before March 1, 1991, or elect to credit certain service with nonappropriated fund instrumentalities. This notice is necessary to conform the present value factors to changes in the economic and demographic assumptions adopted by the Board of Actuaries of the Civil Service Retirement System.... The revised present value factors apply to survivor reductions or employee annuities that commence on or after October 1, 2014." [Federal Register Doc. 2014-11762, May 21, 2014 issue.] (Office of Personnel Management [OPM])

Text of EBSA Notice: Request for Continued OMB Approval of Procedures for Prohibited Transaction Exemptions, Participant Investment Advice, and Alternative Method of Compliance for Certain SEPs
"This notice requests public comment on the Department's request for extension of the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) approval of [information collection requests (ICRs)] contained in the rules and prohibited transactions described below. The Department is not proposing any changes to the existing ICRs at this time." [Federal Register Doc. 2014-11749, May 21, 2014 issue.] (Employee Benefits Security Administration [EBSA], U.S. Department of Labor)

FATCA Compliance Challenges for Retirement Plans
"In the context of retirement plans, FATCA has three potentially significant areas of impact: [1] Reporting and withholding obligations for non-U.S. retirement plans; [2] Reporting and withholding obligations for non-U.S. investments made by U.S. retirement plans; and [3] Individual participant reporting obligations." (Groom Law Group)

[Advert.]

Please join us for our 3rd Annual ftwilliam.com Customer Conference!

Sign-up for our 3rd Annual ftwilliam.com Customer Conference, August 3-5 in downtown Chicago! Earn CE credits while learning about the latest industry news and trends, interacting with your peers, and learning more about your ftwilliam.com software tools.

Fee Disclosure Concerns and New Guidance for Fiduciaries
"The change in regulations intends to make it easier, and therefore less expensive, for the plan fiduciaries to comply with the law. Employers that made a good faith effort to comply with the regulations should be able to pass the [DOL]'s scrutiny in the event of a plan audit for prior years.... Employers that largely ignored or continue to ignore the requirements (for example by relying merely on whatever information the service providers furnish) will not fare so well." (Jeffery Mandell Esq., ERISA Law Group)

SEC Commissioner Not Convinced on Need for Uniform Fiduciary Standard
"Just a day after a top SEC official hinted at discord within the commission about an expansion of fiduciary rules to include brokers, a voting member of the agency spoke out in opposition to the proposal, at least until supporters can build a stronger case.... Commissioner Daniel Gallagher said that he believes that the jury is still out on whether it would be in the best interest of investors to extend fiduciary responsibilities to brokers, or that the benefits would outweigh the costs." (On Wall Street)

Gov. Christie Slashes Contributions to New Jersey Pension Fund
"New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said his administration is cutting the state's pension payments to $696 million this fiscal year and $681 million next fiscal year.... The budget he proposed in February had called for a record pension payment of $2.25 billion for the next fiscal year ending June 30, 2015. Mr. Christie had previously pledged to contribute $1.58 billion to the $76.8 billion New Jersey Pension Fund, Trenton, for the fiscal year ending June 30." (Pensions & Investments)

Text of District Court Opinion: Discretion to Set Fees Confers Fiduciary Status and Potential Liability for Breach (PDF)
"MassMutual had the discretion to unilaterally set fees up to a maximum and exercised that discretion. MassMutual asserts that its compensation may come from any combination of three sources: (a) fees charged to plan participants, (b) direct payments from the plan sponsor, or (c) revenue sharing payments from mutual funds.... A reasonable fact-finder could determine that MassMutual functions as an ERISA functional fiduciary under subsection (i) to the extent it determines its own compensation, takes fees out of the separate accounts, and has the discretion to offset some or all of the RSPs against management fees as its compensation." [Golden Star, Inc. v. MassMutual Life Insurance Co., No. 3:11-30235-PBS (D. Mass. May 20, 2014)] (U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts)

On Average, Women Are Still Way Behind Men When It Comes to Retirement Savings
"Men had an average of $139,467 in their individual retirement accounts as of 2012, compared with the average of $81,700 that women had stashed in their IRAs ... [T]he most likely factor ... is probably not that surprising: Women still make less, on average, when compared with men. Women earned roughly 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2012, according to the latest data from the Census Bureau. That was unchanged from the year before and not much higher than the 61 cents women made for every dollar earned by men in 1960." (The Washington Post; subscription may be required)

IRA Balances, Contributions, and Rollovers, 2012 (PDF)
"The average IRA account balance in 2012 was $81,660, while the average IRA individual balance (all accounts from the same person combined) was $105,001.... Rollovers overwhelmingly outweighed new contributions in dollar terms. While almost 2.4 million accounts received contributions, compared with the 1.3 million accounts that received rollovers in 2012, 10 times the amount of dollars were added to IRAs through rollovers than from contributions. The average individual IRA balance increased with age for owners ages 25 or older, from $11,009 for those ages 25-29 to $192,961 for those ages 70 or older." (Employee Benefit Research Institute [EBRI])

Detroit to Workers: Retiring Now Won't Prevent Pension Cuts
"Emergency manager Kevyn Orr's spokesman, Bill Nowling, said Tuesday that the city learned last week that documents and emails being shared among workers claimed, in various ways, that retiring before July 1 might mean less of a pension cut for city workers.... 'That's just flat-out wrong,' Nowling said. 'Cuts to pensions are going to be irrespective of whether you retire now or wait to retire after July 1.'" (coloradoan.com)

The Macroeconomics of Pay-As-You-Go Pension Schemes in an Aging Society
"This paper analyzes and compares the macroeconomic performance of defined-benefit and defined-contribution pay-as-you-go pension systems when population ages. When the fertility rate decreases or longevity rises, it is shown that a shift from defined benefit (defined total benefit or defined annuities) to defined contribution always results in higher per-capita income and life-cycle welfare at the steady state." (Lionel Artige, Laurent Cavenaile, and Pierre Pestieau)

Senate Finance Committee Hearing: 'Strengthening Social Security to Meet the Needs of Tomorrow's Retirees'
Page includes video of hearing, with links to testimony from Stephen Goss, Chief Actuary, Social Security Administration; Dr. Teresa Ghilarducci, Chair of the Economics Department, New School for Social Research; Dr. Jason J. Fichtner, Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason University; and Dr. Maya Rockeymoore, President & CEO, Center for Global Policy Solutions. (U.S. Senate Committee on Finance)

Fixing Social Security
"[An] immediate and permanent 32% hike in the Social Security payroll tax rate (from 12.4% to 16.4%, forever) is needed to pay the existing benefits. Alternatively, an immediate and permanent 23% cut in all OASDI benefits would provide long-term solvency. Either of these options -- or any combination -- would be extremely painful if executed with simple broad strokes, as an ill-informed Congress might do. But dialogue and research by experts over a reasonable period can produce better results -- provided the experts are willing to recognize the complete set of problems in the existing program!" (Prof. Laurence J. Kotlikoff, for National Academy of Social Insurance [NASI])

A Response to Larry Kotlikoff's Social Security Proposal
"The U.S. retirement system is currently a mixture of the wage-based Social Security program and capital-based individual retirement accounts financed by workers alone or by workers and employers jointly. By converting the former into a system resembling the latter, Kotlikoff would force everybody to put all of their retirement income eggs into the capital market basket.... Even the Chileans have recently added a defined-benefit element to their retirement system, having concluded that a mixture of defined benefit and defined contribution was superior to exclusive reliance on individual defined-contribution accounts." (Larry Thompson, Founding Board Member, National Academy of Social Insurance [NASI])

How to Get People Saving in America Again? Obamacare for Retirement Accounts.
"Retirement security wonks tend to like the automatic savings idea, but they're worried the ones in the works might suffer from a giant design flaw. Both California and Connecticut's plans guarantee that the saver will never lose money. In order to offer that guarantee, they have to buy insurance from a private firm, which could increase investment fees to about a third of the value of contributions." (The Washington Post; subscription may be required)

Final IRS Regs Allow Tax-Free Purchase of Disability Insurance by DC Plans
"To realize these tax benefits, a disability insurance contract must satisfy all of the following requirements: [1] The insurance contract must provide for payments to the plan if the participant cannot work due to disability. [2] The amount of disability payments may not exceed the reasonably expected amount of annual contributions that would have been made to the plan during the period of disability, reduced by any other contributions credited to the participant's account during such period.... [3] The insurance coverage is not self-insured by the employer, but instead is purchased from a third party insurer." (Husch Blackwell LLP)

2010 IRPAC Report: Employee Benefits and Payroll Subgroup
Recommendations by a subgroup of the Information Reporting Program Advisory Committee. Items include [1] Health Care Valuation on Form W-2; [2] Tip Reporting Compliance and Enforcement Efforts; [3] EINs for Qualified Plans/Trusts; [4] TIN Masking on Payee 1099s; [5] Transparency for Abusive Use of Multiple EINs to Establish Multiple Tax-Favored Benefit Plans; [6] 2009 Form 5500/5330 Automatic Extension for Calendar Year Plans; and [7] Basis Allocation for Direct Rollovers. Published online by IRS on May 19, 2014. (Internal Revenue Service [IRS])

2010 IRPAC Public Report: Ad Hoc Subgroup
Recommendations by a subgroup of the Information Reporting Program Advisory Committee. Items include [1] Electronic Furnishing of Forms 1098, 1099, 5498 and W-2; [2] Form 5498 and Fair Market Value Reporting for Deceased Beneficiaries and Successor Beneficiaries; [3] Information Regarding Non-Resident Alien Taxation and Tax Reporting; [4]  Reporting Guidelines for the Return of Mistaken HSA Contributions to an Employer; [5] Form 1099-R Reporting under EPCRS Guidelines for SEP, SARSEP and SIMPLE Excesses Returned to Employer; and [6]  Form 5498-SA, HSA, Archer MSA, or Medicare Advantage MSA Information Due Date Change. Published online by IRS on May 20, 2014. (Internal Revenue Service [IRS])

Sixth Circuit: ERISA's Whistleblower Provision Doesn't Protect All Volunteered Information
"While the Court agreed that Sexton had given information, it concluded that he had not done so in connection with an 'inquiry' -- regardless of whether inquiry meant something formal or merely an inquiry in the colloquial sense. In so ruling, the Court observed that Congress had enacted approximately four dozen anti-retaliation laws and that most of them include two distinct types of prohibitions: (i) the type that protects employees who report unlawful practices; and (ii) the type that protects employees who participate in inquiries, proceedings, or hearings. With respect to ERISA Section 510, Congress only included the latter and that must be given effect." [ Sexton v. Panel Processing, Inc. , No. 13-1604 (6th Cir. May 9, 2014)] (Proskauer's ERISA Practice Center)

IRS Announces Section 409A Audit Initiative
"Section 409A created severe penalties for the service provider (i.e., the employee or director) ... [including] a 20% additional income tax, interest on underpaid taxes, and the acceleration of taxable income once the award is no longer subject to a substantial risk of forfeiture. Although the tax consequences apply to the employee or other service provider, companies will want to make sure that their deferred compensation arrangements comply because of potential related exposure, e.g., due to employee claims against the employer, employer withholding and reporting noncompliance, and the allocation of Code Section 409A risks/costs in future M&A or other transactions." (Quarles & Brady LLP)

United Airlines Pilots Who Served in the Military Win Historic $6.15 Million Settlement Over Veterans? Pension Benefits Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll PLLC

IRI Partners with HealthView Services to Address Retirement Health Care Cost Planning Gap Insured Retirement Institute [IRI]

Beltz Ianni & Associates Adds Retirement Plan Consultant Beltz Ianni & Associates

View All Press Releases