Webinar – Phased Retirement Programs: Exploring the Issues
(Posted on December 5, 2016 by )


Lorman Distinguished Faculty MemberPhased retirement has become increasingly popular among two groups of employees: those who would like to begin easing away from work at a younger age, and those who need to continue working at older ages but require a less demanding schedule. We recently conducted a webinar to help employers identify the situations in which phased retirement may be beneficial, and structure phased retirement arrangements in such a way as to avoid the practical and legal pitfalls.

The PowerPoint presentation for the webinar is now available at this link.

A Trump Presidency: What Does It Mean for Employee Benefits?
(Posted on November 29, 2016 by )


White HouseBased on both campaign promises and Donald Trump’s plans for his first 100 days, a Trump presidency is likely to make major changes in employee benefits law. The most significant ones are likely to be:

  1. Major changes in the Affordable Care Act (although the timing and extent of such changes are unclear), combined with expansion of health savings accounts.
  2. Postponement or elimination of the recently issued Department of Labor fiduciary regulations.
  3. Loosening of executive compensation rules.
  4. Further cutbacks in IRS guidance and audit activity.
  5. Increased hostility to consideration of noneconomic factors in selecting retirement plan investments.
  6. Diminished enforcement of protections for LGBT employees.
  7. Increased activity at the state level, including establishment of state-sponsored retirement plans for private employers.

These issues, and others of less general concern, are discussed below. Read more.

Carol V. Calhoun Quoted in BNA Article, “IRS Rules Keep Status Quo for Many Governmental Plans”
(Posted on February 15, 2016 by )


The article, dealing with the proposed IRS regulations dealing with the definition of normal retirement age for governmental plans, is subscription only. However, in relevant part, it said:

The proposed rules generally were favorable, allowing plans to maintain the status quo in most cases, Carol V. Calhoun, president of the Bethesda, Md.-based Calhoun Law Group, [now Counsel at Venable LLP, Washington, DC] told Bloomberg BNA on Feb. 4.

“They say a governmental plan does not have to define normal retirement age, that it will be at whatever point you can receive a normal retirement benefit under the plan that is not reduced actuarially,” Calhoun said. For instance, the rules said that if a governmental plan says that normal retirement age is 25 years of service, then that will be considered the normal retirement age, she said.

Qualified Government Plan

A qualified governmental plan is one that is established and maintained for its employees by the federal government, a state government or political subdivision thereof, or by any agency or instrumentality of the federal or state government. The proposed rules “basically took all of the normal retirement ages that any state-wide plan has and they said all of those were going to be acceptable,” Calhoun said.

More discussion of the proposed rules can be found at this link.