California Asset Protection News

The Pension Protection Act 2005

The Pension Protection Act (H.R. 2830) will fix outdated pension rules to help ensure employers properly and adequately fund their worker pension plans, provide meaningful new disclosure to workers about the status of their pension plan, protect taxpayers from a possible multi-billion dollar taxpayer bailout, and make common sense modifications to encourage greater personal savings for retirement and other needs.

Ensuring Employers Fund Their Pension Promises to Workers:

• Provides a permanent interest rate based on a modified “yield curve” for employers to more accurately measure current pension liabilities as they come due.
• Requires employers to make sufficient contributions to plans in order to meet a 100 percent funding target, phased in over five years for companies for plans that are, in general, funded above 90 percent under current law; companies with plans funded below 90 percent must meet the new 100 percent target immediately.  The phase-in of the 100 percent target begins in 2007.
• Requires employers to make additional contributions to erase funding shortfalls over seven years.
• Triggers accelerated contributions if a plan’s funded status falls below 60 percent, with a five-year phase-in. 
• Reduces the smoothing of interest rates to protect plans against market and funding volatility.
• Prohibits employers from using credit balances if their plans are funded at less than 80 percent.
• Permits employers to make additional maximum deductible contributions of up to 150 percent of current liability. 

Contact a California Asset Protection lawyer today and get a free consultation!

	Did You Know?
	Conservation Easement is a legal agreement A Conservation Easement is a legal agreement reached voluntarily between a landowner and a land trust that protects water quality, wildlife habitat, scenic vistas, agricultural productivity and other conservation values permanently restricts the use of property by current and future landowners keeps property in private hands. Donating some or all of the development rights to a qualified, tax-exempt organization like the Washtenaw Land Trust, and meeting other specific conditions, allows a landowner to be eligible for certain tax benefits.