The Internal Revenue Service says it is streamlining its system of programs
for helping retirement plan sponsors and administrators retain the favorable
tax status of their plans.
In a ruling that could give employers more control over the cost their long-term disability programs, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that such programs need not defer to the views of the employee's personal doctor when deciding whether to provide benefits.
The health plan administrators of U.S. Alliance Inc. and International Benefits Association Inc., of Washington, D.C., are liable to pay up to $2.8 million from future income for unpaid medical claims owed to at least 1,500 plan participants, according to a final consent judgment obtained by the U.S. Department of Labor.
A proposed accounting approach for determining liabilities in cash balance
pensions would artificially drive up the liabilities for many of these plans
on corporate balance sheets, argues Watson Wyatt, the benefits consulting firm.
The government has sued a Tennessee company and its former corporate executives for "imprudently
using" $1,075,892.42 of the assets of the employee stock ownership plan.
On the premise that blue-collar workers have shorter life expectancies than
white-collar ones, certain industries would be allowed reduce the amounts they
place into their pension funds under a measure making its way through the U.S.
House of Representatives.
The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service announced Monday
that they were withdrawing part of a proposed regulation concerning age discrimination
in retirement plans.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation assumed control Tuesday of US Airways pilots' underfunded pension plan. But the PBGC, which operates as the government's pension-protection program, only will fund about a fourth of the losses.
Companies that operate traditional, defined-benefit pension plans are pressing Congress to stop using the interest rate of the 30-year Treasury bond as the basis for making key calculations in pension law.
A majority (61 percent) of working Americans said in a November 2002 survey conducted for American Express that they were experiencing moderate to high levels of financial stress, and one-quarter believed their financial stress had gotten worse in the last 18-24 months.
