Pensions

Policy Priorities for 2012

Multiemployer Funding Reform

• Work with Congress and other interested parties in finding solutions to long-term funding issues in the multiemployer pension plan system.

Single-Employer Funding Reform

• Urge Congress to enact permanent provisions to address the challenges presented by the current economic situation and the need for future predictability in the funding rules. 

Required Notices and Disclosures

• Work with Congress and the administration to consolidate and streamline certain notice requirements to ensure that information provided to workers is clear and meaningful.

Electronic Disclosure

• Work with regulators to increase the options for electronic disclosures of notices.

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) Premiums and Reform

• Continue to oppose efforts to increase PBGC premiums without making additional changes – including governance and transparency – that are needed to ensure the viability of the PBGC.

Reporting of and Liability for Certain Substantial Cessations of Operations

• Lobby Congress and the PBGC to ensure that the PBGC does not continue to enforce as current law a proposed regulation under ERISA Section 4062(e). The agency has stated that the proposed regulation will be reconsidered pursuant to Executive Order 13563 on Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review. 

Tax Reform

• Work to ensure that tax incentives for retirement plans are not weakened.

Pension Accounting

• Monitor and engage with the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) as it evaluates and proposes changes to the accounting standards for measuring pension and other benefit costs, obligations, and assets.

Automatic IRAs and Universal IRAs

• Work with Congress and the administration to create a system that does not burden employers or impose on the private retirement system.
• Oppose proposals that require an employer mandate, create a TSP II system, or increase ERISA fiduciary liability for employers.

Plan Fee Disclosure

• Work to ensure that overly burdensome requirements for plan fee disclosure, generated in response to attention garnered from lawsuits and Capitol Hill, are not implemented by regulation or statute.

Decumulation Strategies

• Work with Congress and our membership to reach consensus on legislation to promote useful decumulation strategies pertaining to annuities, long-term care insurance, and other products without overly burdening plan sponsors.

Small Business Issues

• Tax Penalties under Code Section 6707 – Urge Congress to pass legislation that does not allow a penalty for failing to disclose reportable transactions when there is reasonable cause for such failure. More than a half dozen of the reportable transactions involve employee benefits plans used by small businesses.   
• Interim Amendments – Work with the IRS and Treasury to decrease the burden on small plan sponsors caused by the interim amendment requirements.

Nonqualified Deferred Compensation

• Continue to monitor regulatory and statutory activity to prevent overly burdensome rules and regulations.

Phased Retirement

• Continue to address the legal, fiscal, policy, and practical barriers to phased retirement.
   

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