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The Hottest Ticket in Town! [Advert.]
ASPPA co-sponsors several regional conferences each year with the IRS to provide discussion opportunities with colleagues and local, regional and national government representatives from IRS and DOL. Check to see when we're coming to your region!
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[Guidance Overview]
District Court Must Order Plan Committee to Apply Correct Legal Standard to Top-Hat Plan Issue
"A district court erred when it failed to order a retirement plan committee to use the correct legal standard to determine whether the plan met ERISA's requirements for a top-hat plan, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati . . . has ruled. The appellate court reversed the district court's ruling that, because the plan was not a top-hat plan, the employer had violated ERISA's vesting and other substantive requirements."
(Wolters Kluwer Law & Business / CCH)
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[Guidance Overview]
Practitioners' Forum Discussion: Loomis v. Exelon Corp.
"[T]he Seventh Circuit affirmed a lower court's holding that the plan fiduciary did not breach its duties under ERISA . . . by offering retail mutual funds as part of the investment options in a participant-directed defined contribution plan."
(Compensation Planning Journal via The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc.)
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A Primer on 401(k) Plan Design Alternatives (PDF)
"Many times a Plan Sponsor simply wants to make a 401(k) plan available to employees so that the employees have the ability to do personal salary deferrals on either a Roth or traditional pre-tax basis. This might be necessary because employees are demanding it or the company needs the 401(k) plan for recruiting purposes."
(Plan Design Consultants, Inc.)
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Learn to Make Market Swings Work for Your Retirement Investments, Professor Says
"[A new book, 401k Day Trading,] tells investors how to take control of their own future through easy-to-implement retirement strategies. 'The overlying philosophy relates to how you can use market volatility to your advantage,' . . . . 'In the past 10 years, you've been able to do 25 percent better than the market,' through this process. Put simply, '401k day trading comes down to buying low and selling high every day,' . . . ."
(The NASDAQ Stock Market, Inc.)
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Stable-Value Funds Are Shaky 401(k) Options
"Stable-value funds are available only in 401(k) and other types of retirement savings plans. These are non-public funds — meaning the investor typically has a hard time researching them — that are supposed to hold a high-quality diversified, fixed-income portfolio which protects against interest-rate volatility."
(MarketWatch, Inc.)
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The Sonoma County, California, Pension Crisis (PDF)
"As a result of its overly generous salaries and pension benefits, Sonoma County now has the highest pension debt per capita of any county in California and maybe the nation. And even with all this debt, which stands at over $500 mil.lion, the pension fund is underfunded by $380 mil.lion and the health insurance fund is underfunded by $250 mil.lion. In the last 4 years alone, due to the poor performance of its investments, the unfunded liability has increased by $600 mil.lion."
(Sonoma County Tax Payers Association)
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Many Defined Contribution Plan Executives Unclear on Plan Data
"A review by Pensions & Investments . . . of recent surveys on DC plan management, behavior and governance shows the percentages of 'don't know' or 'not sure' answers from financial and human resources executives can reach high double digits."
(Business Insurance)
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Pension Accounting Changes Negatively Affecting Earnings Statements
"The Boeing Company, AT&T, UPS, Windstream Corp. and FirstEnergy Corp. all announced that lower discount rates and a change to recognizing pension gains and losses in the year in which they occur, rather than amortizing them over time, has resulted in a charge for pensions."
(PLANSPONSOR.COM)
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Lawmakers Wary of Military Retirement Commission Plan
"The DOD proposal calls for authority similar to what has been provided to past base closure and realignment commissions, so that Congress could only give an up-or-down vote on the commission's final recommendations, with no ability to make any changes."
(Gannett Government Media Corporation)
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Low-Cost Entries Shake Up Small Retirement Plan Market
"If you own a small business, the time to comparison-shop for 401k plans has never been better. Low-cost plans are cropping up, as new federal regulations kicking in this year call for greater disclosure of fee information to plan participants and sponsors."
(Thomson Reuters)
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Romney May Cost Private Equity as Pensions Warn of Backlash
"Mitt Romney's campaign for the Republican presidential nomination may be costing his private- equity backers a lot more than they bargained for. Attacks by opponents portraying Bain Capital LLC, Romney and other buyout managers as corporate looters who enrich themselves at the expense of ordinary workers have put a spotlight on the industry that will affect negotiations about future investments, according to officials and trustees at public pensions."
(Bloomberg L.P.)
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The Number of Working Americans Covered by a Workplace Retirement Plan
"One of the more pervasive statistics bandied around about the voluntary retirement system is that only about half of working Americans are covered by a workplace retirement plan. It's a data point that is widely and openly presented as fact — not only by those inclined to dismiss the current system as inadequate, but even by some of its most ardent champions, who see that result as a call to action for expanded access to these programs. There's only one problem: It doesn't tell the whole story."
(Employee Benefit Research Institute)
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[Opinion]
Comments to DOL on Disclosure of Compensation Arrangements to Plan Fiduciaries by Broker-Dealers (PDF)
"[I]f broker-dealers feel the need to disclose every potential compensation arrangement for a brokerage account, plan fiduciaries will likely be overwhelmed by such information, rendering it virtually useless. . . . One possible way to eliminate this burdensome disclosure is to limit the 408b-2 compensation disclosures for brokerage accounts to the disclosures required under applicable securities laws."
(Drinkle Biddle & Reath LLP)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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[Guidance Overview]
IRS's 2012 Maximums for Valuing an Employer-Provided Vehicle's Personal Use
"If a company car is used for commuting or other personal uses that are more than de minimis, the employee will recognize income on the value of the personal use. That value may be determined using a general valuation rule or one of three special valuation rules: the automobile annual lease valuation rule, the cents-per-mile rule, or the commuting valuation rule."
(Thomson Reuters/EBIA)
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Legislative Background of Expiring Federal Tax Provisions, 2011-2022
"The legislative background provided for each expiring provision includes: A brief description of the provision, The public law in which the provision was originally enacted with the original expiration date, A brief description of substantial modifications to the provision, if any, and The public law in which the provision was most recently extended, if any, with the current expiration date."
(U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation)
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The State of Broad-Based Employee Ownership Plans 2012
This report details the extent and growth of employee ownership through ESOPs, 401(k) plans, stock options, ESPPs, and other vehicles; summarizes the leading research on employee ownership and corporate performance; and discusses current challenges and prospects.
(National Center for Employee Ownership)
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Press Releases
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