On Friday (April 4, 2014), the IRS issued Notice 2014-19, addressing how the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage in U.S. v. Windsor and IRS Rev. Rul. 2013-17 affects retirement plans and pension plans, including 401(k) plans. Notice 2014-19 is 7 pages long.
Last year, When the IRS issued Rev. Rul. 2013-17, the Service left a number of questions unanswered for qualified plans, including how far back Windsor should be applied, and whether plan sponsors need to adopt an amendment to comply with Windsor. This led to a lot of debate, especially over whether, when and how plans should/could/must apply Windsor retroactively. After all, when the U.S. Supreme Court decides something is unconstitutional, and has always been unconstitutional, that ruling normally applies back to the inception, not to a specific date. As a practical matter, which is not suppose to factor in when correcting unconstitutionality, asking retirement and pension plans to review every distribution, loan, and spousal consent obtained since the Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law in 1996, and making correcting distributions when warranted, would be an immense burden on our industry (again, how difficult, time-consuming and expensive for an industry to correct an unconstitutionality should be irrelevant).
In Q&A-2 of Notice 2014-19, the IRS tells us that “a retirement plan will not be treated as failing to meet the requirements of section 401(a) merely because it did not recognize the same-sex spouse of a participant as a spouse before June 26, 2013″. I’m not sure what the federal court system will do with this pronouncement, but it is what the IRS has given us to work with for now. I think best practices for any qualified plan this year is to update all spousal consents and beneficiary forms.
As for if/when amendments must be adopted, Q&A-8 of Notice 2014-19 says “the deadline to adopt a plan amendment pursuant to this notice is the later of (i) the otherwise applicable deadline under section 5.05 of Rev. Proc. 2007-44, or its successor, or (ii) Dec. 31, 2014.”
On May 8, 2014 from 2pm to 3:40pm, we are holding a live web seminar to discuss Notice 2014-19. We have divided this seminar into 2 parts of 50 minutes each to allow attendees to earn 1 CE credit if they want to attend only 1 part.
In Part 1 of this live web seminar, we discuss the requirement of Q&A-8 of Notice 2014-19 which states that some plans may need to adopt an amendment by the later of: (1) the deadline under section 5.05 of Rev Proc 2007-44; or (2) Dec. 31, 2014, including discussing how to determine what plans may need to adopt this amendment, the deadline to adopt the amendment, how to determine which deadline applies, what a sample amendment may say, and how the restatement period which just started for defined contribution plans affects this amendment since the language in IRS pre-approved PPA prototype and volume submitter defined contribution plan documents was approved prior to the release of Notice 2014-19.
In Part 2 of this live web seminar, we discuss how IRS Notice 2014-19 addresses various issues which the IRS states the decision in Windsor caused for qualified plans, including discussions of Internal Revenue Code section 401(a)(11) qualified joint and survivor annuities (QJSA) spousal consent rules; the spousal consent rules of Code section 417(a)(4) for plan loans; the spousal consent rules of Code section 401(a)(11)(B)(iii) for designating a beneficiary for purposes of QJSAs and QPSAs; the surviving spouse rules for required minimum distributions under Code section 401(a)(9); and the attribution rules of Code section 1563(e)(5) for determining whether a spouse is treated by the IRS as owning shares owned by the other spouse for purposes of determining whether corporations are members of a controlled group under Code section 414(b).
The cost to attend our live web seminar on Notice 2014-19 is $50 for each individual, which includes both Part 1 and Part 2. Individuals registered for our 16 Credit Hours for $195 seminar package can attend as part of their package at no additional charge. Group packages are available.
You can reserve a seat in this seminar, or see what live web seminars we have coming up, here.
This seminar is 100 minutes long and is designed to meet ASPPA’s and NIPA’s requirements for 2 CPE credits. This IRS has approved this program for 2 CPE credits for Enrolled Retirement Plan Agents and Enrolled Agents.
