Commenting on new Social Security deficit projection figures published this week, Rob Fishbein, corporate counsel at Prudential Financial, says it’s not time to hit the panic button yet—but it is time to take very seriously the retirement income challenge individuals face.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association wants a federal district court to halt the program, based on ERISA preemption and the possibility that home-owning Californians could be called on to pay additional taxes to support Secure Choice, which aims at opening up retirement investing opportunities.
Adjustments made to the corporate tax rate, repatriation of offshore cash and interest rate deductibility all are likely to have immediate effects on the credit markets—and by extension, on institutional investors’ fixed-income portfolios.
Since the 20% deduction of qualified business income means that a self-employed individual will be taxed at a lower rate than an employee performing substantially the same work with a broker/dealer firm, might more brokerage employees be driven to act as independent contractors?
Alongside numerous proposed changes, employees who work for three consecutive years with at least 500 hours of service each year would have to be made eligible to participate in an employer’s plan, but would be excluded from top-heavy and nondiscrimination testing.
Congressional Republicans have successfully pushed a unified version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act through the House once, and they may now have to do it again.
The text of a combined bill drawing together the House and Senate proposals is slowly emerging ahead of critical up-or-down floor votes scheduled for early next week.
It appears some last-minute amendments have largely removed controversial provisions from the Senate’s version of tax reform legislation that would have had a big impact on governmental 457 and nonprofit 403(b) plan sponsors.
With the passage of the Senate’s version of tax reform, the stage is set for a bicameral conference committee process through which a select group of legislators will try to rectify the House and Senate bill texts.
House and Senate Democrats say their “Better Deal” proposal
offers an alternative vision to the GOP’s economic agenda, with a focus on
protecting union pensions and access to retirement accounts.
Among other amendments that have already emerged in both the
House and the Senate tax proposals, it seems nonqualified deferred compensation
plans will more or less be left alone.
Analysts warn it’s too soon to tell what middle ground, if
any, may be reached between the House and Senate; for now 401(k) retirement
plan deferrals appear to be mostly unaltered, but other important changes are
proposed.
In a point-of-view white paper, Mercer offers several specific policy recommendations to address what should be done to enable more Americans to retire with confidence.
The proposal effectively eliminates nonqualified deferred compensation (NQDC) plans as tools for tax planning available to executives and public companies, attorneys with Groom Law Group say.
Industry observers are pleased to see the overall deferral
limits for 401(k) plans left unaffected, but there are still some important changes
included in the bill concerning the treatment of DC account loans, hardship withdrawals, nondiscrimination
testing, and more.
It appears 401(k) contributions won’t be affected by tax
reform, but one industry veteran warns the process is still only just beginning—and
that tax uncertainty is “unfortunately not likely to ever go away.”
An Employee Benefit Research Institute analysis breaks down the number of 401(k) contributors who would be affected by a mandatory, partial Rothification proposal in tax reform.
It is clear which countries lead the way in providing
sustainable retirement systems with adequate benefits—and what others can learn
from them to improve.
Retirement plan advisers are in a unique position to help
working Americans build wealth and a sense of security and dignity when it
comes to thinking about long-term finances.