This book provides an analysis of the current problems of pension provision in the UK and a radical plan for reform. The authors believe that the system of retirement income provision in the UK is so mired in complexity that nothing less than wholesale change is necessary. The authors believe that state pensions should only be offered on a contributory basis - there should be no automatic right to a 'citizen's pension', as has been proposed by many commentators. Attention should also be paid to the social security system to remove the perverse incentives of means testing. Anomalies and special treatment of favoured groups in the tax system should also be removed. The Way Out of the Pensions Quagmire proposes a holistic approach to pension reform that takes proper account of the interaction between pensions, tax, social security and financial regulation.

This work deals clearly with one of the most topical and complex areas of family law. When a marriage breaks down it is the pension fund that is often one of the most important assets in dispute.

As Social Security, workplace pensions, and individual retirement accounts become more insecure, America's pension system is in serious need of rehabilitation. In this timely volume, Mitchell A. Orenstein and his distinguished colleagues Gary Burtless, Teresa Ghilarducci, and Alicia Munnell argue that any reform of the U.S. pension system must address both future imbalances in the Social Security program and weaknesses in the workplace and individual retirement systems on which a growing number of Americans now rely. Weighing what is gained against what is lost as new proposals surface, this book offers a clear account and reasoned analysis of the looming crisis, as well as our collective alternatives both domestically and abroad.

Theoretical and policy perspectives on the taxation of pension, viewed in an international context. Policy makers and academic researchers have been preoccupied in recent decades with the design of pension schemes and effective pension system reform. Relatively little attention has been given to the taxation of pensions and, more broadly, the provision of retirement income. In this book, experts from a range of countries explore the interconnection. Their contributions are especially timely, given recent demographic and political developments including population aging that lengthens the time between contribution payment and benefit receipt, the mobility of capital and labor brought about by globalization, and the complexity of pension taxation within and between countries. In shedding light on these issues, the chapters document the various forms of taxation of pension systems; use economic theory to explain both qualitative and quantitative observations; and consider whether the observed interaction of taxation and pensions is efficient. Theoretical overviews are followed by rigorous analyses of pension taxation in specific countries, including Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Australia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Contributors Torben M. Andersen, Spencer Bastani, Hazel Bateman, Soeren Blomquist, Axel Boersch-Supan, Jorge Miguel Bravo, Gary Burtless, Rafal Chomik, Helmuth Cremer, Carl Emmerson, Csaba Feher, Bernd Genser, Robert Holzmann, Paul Johnson, Alain Jousten, Christian Keuschnigg, Eric Koepcke, George Kudrna, Jukka Lassila, Luca Micheletto, Pierre Pestieau, John Piggott, Christopher Quinn, Tarmo Valkonen, Alan Woodland

Caroline Garnham, a former leading private client lawyer and head of Simmons & Simmons private client practice for fifteen years, was nominated as one of the top five leading private client lawyers by The Lawyer in 2011. She was a contributor for the Financial Times from 1986 to 1998, pioneered the area of law now known as Family Governance and proposed and drafted the Executive Entity Act for the Bahamas, which became law in December 2011. This book draws on her extensive knowledge and intimate experience in working for some of the world's wealthiest families. Pulling together scores of examples, she looks at the relationship of the UHNW community and their advisors from both perspectives. She believes that by understanding each other, they can work together more productively. Caroline had a break from practicing law in December 2011 to focus her attention on making investment opportunities, exclusive luxury products and relevant information more available to the UHNW community. She designed a digital platform which she now runs as a joint venture enterprise www.bconnectclub.com. It provides a safe and secure neutral website, where UHNWIs can find investment opportunities, luxury products and services and where subscribers can promote their case studies, news and views to this hard to reach market. Caroline is actively advising clients. She is passionate about the need for UHNW families to use teams of trusted advisers on a regular basis. They cannot hope to know the detail of what risks lie in wait for them and need a team of advisers - which she calls a `Ring of Confidence' - to keep them fully informed.

The buy-out market, whereby pension liabilities are transferred to a third-party specialist, has changed dramatically in recent years. Many new market entrants have sought to provide opportunities to employers to reduce or eliminate their exposure to defined benefit pension scheme liabilities in a cost-effective fashion. Increases in anticipated longevity, combined with historically low interest rates and poor equity returns, have resulted in substantially increased costs for employers. Together with the credit crunch, the collapse of high-profile banking institutions and a deteriorating economy, they provide yet further reasons for employers and trustees to seek to protect defined benefit liabilities. Buy-outs (and their alternative, buy-ins) have represented an attractive opportunity for trustees and employers alike in seeking to eliminate such exposure. The number of new market entrants and the new 'non-insured' buy-out model have generated considerable competition and a significant reduction in buy-out and buy-in cost. Featuring contributions by leading experts in the field, including the Pension Corporation, Lucida, Hewitt Associates and Pitmans Trustees Limited, this timely title covers topics such as the attractions of the current buy-out market, the non-insured buy-out option, the Financial Services Authority regulated market and the elimination of pension scheme liabilities, as well as an overview of the buy-out market in selected countries. This book is aimed at a broad cross-section of the pension market and is intended to be of practical use to trustees, employers, advisers, administrators and other pension stakeholders in providing a comprehensive guide to how best to tackle the thorny issue of eliminating defined benefit scheme liabilities.

Superannuation was once a privilege granted only to company head office staff and career public servants. Now in Australia nearly all workers have access to employer-contributed superannuation, and it is a fundamental pillar of Australia's retirement income system.Workers' Capital tells the story of the Australian superannuation revolution led by trade unions in the 1980s. After a series of hard-fought industrial campaigns, an enormous financial industry was created, involving hundreds of thousands of employers and covering millions of fund members. From having one of the worst retirement savings systems in the developed world, in three decades Australia had one of the best. Now the funds held in Australian superannuation accounts exceed the entire market capitalisation of all the companies on the Australian Stock Exchange.Drawing on interviews with the key players and extensive archival research, Workers' Capital is the first systematic history of the unique Australian system of industry superannuation.'Startling and informative-I thought I knew a lot about the industry superannuation phenomenon, but this one took me by surprise. For a topic so important, a real page-turner.' Gerard Noonan, Chair of Media Super, former editor of Australian Financial Review

Pension scheme deficits are rarely out of the headlines. Never in their history have they enjoyed their current notoriety, nor has their importance been more apparent. Over 10,000 pension schemes provide pension benefits that are designed to replace a proportion of the recipient's salary when they retire. These schemes are the flagship of the occupational pensions system - and the vast majority are in deficit, some severely. This book is designed to take the reader through how this has come about and what is being done to rectify it. The book includes contributions from leading practitioners in their field, who are grappling with the often highly complex issues that deficits produce on a day-to-day basis, in an accessible and understandable format. Featuring practical analysis on a wide range of issues - from traditional methods of addressing a deficit, alternative methods of funding deficit reduction, investment and employment considerations to the Pensions Regulator and the Pension Protection Fund, the emergence of an alternative buyout market and corporate governance - this book will provide you with the only comprehensive guide to dealing with pension scheme deficits in your practice. Aimed at a broad cross-section of the pensions market, this book will be of great practical use to all who have to deal with a pension fund deficit. Trustees, corporate officers and stakeholders, from chief financial officers and finance directors to pension managers, and the entire range of advisers - accounting, actuarial and legal - will find the book of interest and practical use.

This book provides background and analysis of the premiums charged by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), which is a government-owned corporation that was created in 1974 to protect the retirement income of participants in private-sector, defined benefit (DB) pension plans. When a company terminates a DB pension plan that does not have enough assets to pay 100% of the promised benefits, PBGC pays, in accordance with statute and up to a maximum yearly dollar amount, the benefits to participants in the terminated plan. In FY2012, 887,000 individuals received $5.5 billion in benefit payments from PBGC. An additional 614,000 workers will receive benefits when they retire. PBGC consists of two insurance programs: (1) a multi-employer pension program, which protects the benefits of 10.3 million participants in collectively bargained DB pensions in which several employers make contributions, and (2) a larger single-employer pension program, which protects the benefits of 33.4 million participants in DB pensions operated by one employer for its eligible employees.

This book looks at the 78 million members of the "baby boom" generation who are beginning to retire. After many years of accumulating assets to spend in retirement, they now must decide how to convert these assets into a steady stream of income. Because of the trend away from defined benefit (DB) pensions to defined contribution (DC) plans, such as 401(k)plans, future retirees will be less likely to have a guaranteed stream of income from defined benefit pensions. Furthermore, while Social Security will provide a guaranteed income to most retirees, it will replace only a relatively small portion of their pre-retirement income.

The long-term trend in declining retirement security has been exacerbated by the recent turmoil in the financial markets, and underscores the need for swift and broad action to vastly improve the retirement income security for the majority of American families. Americans need to be reassured that the money that they will save for retirement will actually be there when they need it. The exposure to large market swings, as we have experienced twice in the past decade, can send individual investors scrambling for an exit at the most inopportune time. This prevents them from saving enough, and actually increases their exposure to financial market risks. This book examines the impact and issues of the financial crisis on retirement security in the United States. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.

This book focuses on women and retirement. Women aged 65 and over will account for a growing segment of the U.S. population over the next several decades. Despite increases in women's workforce behaviour in the past 65 years, elderly women have persistently high rates of poverty. Thus, it is important to understand the differences between men's and women's retirement income, and how women may fare given future reforms to Social Security and pensions. Preparing for retirement and achieving financial security are daunting tasks for all Americans to be sure; however, women face many unique challenges. Women still perform the primary caretaker role in our society. As a result, many women spend significant periods of time out of the workforce raising children or taking care of elderly parents, significantly diluting their earning power. Women are also more likely to work part-time or work in industries where employers are less likely to offer retirement benefits. And women generally earn less than men. In 2004, women earned 77 cents for every dollar earned by men. All of these factors have a significant impact on what women receive from Social Security and pension, as well as what they are able to accumulate through personal savings. This income gap is further exacerbated by the fact that women generally live longer than men, and therefore, need to stretch their income over a longer period of time. This book consists of public domain documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.

Individual retirement accounts, or IRAs, hold more assets than any other type of retirement vehicle. In 2004, IRAs held about $3.5 trillion in assets compared to $2.6 trillion in defined contribution (DC) plans, including 401(k) plans, and $1.9 trillion in defined benefit (DB), or pension plans. Similar percentages of households own IRAs and participate in 401(k) plans, and IRA ownership is associated with higher educational and income levels. Congress created IRAs to provide a way for individuals without employer plans to save for retirement, and to give retiring workers or those changing jobs a way to preserve retirement assets by rolling over, or transferring, plan balances into IRAs. Rollovers into IRAs significantly outpace IRA contributions and account for most assets flowing into IRAs. Given the total assets held in IRAs, they may appear to be comparable to 401(k) plans. However, 401(k) plans are employer-sponsored while most households with IRAs own traditional IRAs established outside the workplace. Several barriers may discourage employers from establishing employer-sponsored IRAs and offering payroll-deduction IRAs to their employees. Although employer-sponsored IRAs were designed with fewer reporting requirements to encourage participation by small employers and payroll-deduction IRAs have none, millions of employees of small firms lack access to a workplace retirement plan. Retirement and savings experts and others told the authors that barriers discouraging employers from offering these IRAs include costs that small businesses may incur for managing IRA plans, a lack of flexibility for employers seeking to promote payroll-deduction IRAs to their employees, and certain contribution requirements of some IRAs. Information is lacking, however, on what the actual costs to employers may be for providing payroll-deduction IRAs and questions remain on the effect that expanded access to these IRAs may have on employees. Experts noted that several proposals exist to encourage employers to offer and employees to participate in employer-sponsored and payroll-deduction IRAs, however limited government actions have been taken. The Internal Revenue Service and Labour share oversight for all types of IRAs, but gaps exist within Labour's area of responsibility. IRS is responsible for tax rules on establishing and maintaining IRAs, while Labour is responsible for oversight of fiduciary standards for employer-sponsored IRAs and provides certain guidance on payroll-deduction IRAs, although Labour does not have jurisdiction. Oversight ensures the interests of the employee participants are protected, that their retirement savings are properly handled, and any applicable guidance and laws are being followed. Because there are very limited reporting requirements for employer-sponsored IRAs and none for payroll-deduction IRAs, Labour does not have processes in place to identify all employers offering IRAs, numbers of employees participating, and employers not in compliance with the law. Obtaining information about employer-sponsored and payroll-deduction IRAs is also important to determine whether these vehicles help workers without DC or DB plans build retirement savings. Although IRS collects and publishes some data on IRAs, IRS has not consistently produced reports on IRAs nor shared such information with other agencies, such as Labour. Labour's Bureau of Labour Statistics National Compensation Survey surveys employer-sponsored benefit plans but collects limited information on employer-sponsored IRAs and no information on payroll-deduction IRAs. Since IRS is the only agency that has data on all IRA participants, consistent reporting of these data could give Labour and others valuable information on IRAs.

Over the past half-century, the number of state and local government workers has grown significantly. In 2006, this sector accounted for about 12 percent of the nation's workforce. Since 1996, accounting standards calling for state and local governments to report their liabilities for future pension costs have been in place, but standards calling for similar treatment of the future costs of retiree health benefits have only recently been issued. It is unclear as yet, what actions state and local governments may take once the future costs of these benefits are known. However, future decisions about the appropriate levels of benefits for retirees will likely occur in a broader context of persistent fiscal challenges that state and local governments will face in the next decade. Hence, concerns have been raised about the public sector's capacity to meet the rising cost of providing its retirees with promised pension and other post-employment benefits, such as retiree health care. State and local retiree benefits are not subject, for the most part, to federal laws governing private sector retiree benefits. Nevertheless, there is a federal interest in ensuring that all Americans have a secure retirement, an interest that is reflected in preferential tax treatment for contributions and investment earnings associated with qualified pension plans in both the public and the private sectors. This is an excerpted and indexed edition.

This study of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) explains in detail how public officials in the executive branch and Congress overcame strong opposition from business and organized labor to pass landmark legislation regulating employer-sponsored retirement and health plans. Before Congress passed ERISA, federal law gave employers and unions great discretion in the design and operation of employee benefit plans. Most importantly, firms and unions could and often did establish pension plans that placed employees at great risk for not receiving any retirement benefits. In the early 1960s, officials in the executive branch proposed a number of regulatory initiatives to protect employees, but business groups and most labor unions objected to the key proposals. Faced with opposition from powerful interest groups, legislative entrepreneurs in Congress, chiefly New York Republican senator Jacob K. Javits, took the case for pension reform directly to voters by publicizing frightening statistics and "horror stories" about pension plans. This deft and successful effort to mobilize the media and public opinion overwhelmed the business community and organized labor and persuaded Javits's colleagues in Congress to support comprehensive pension reform legislation. The enactment of ERISA in September 1974 recast federal policy for private pension plans by making worker security an overriding objective of federal law.

Individual retirement accounts (IRAs), established by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (PL 93-406) to promote retirement saving, were limited at first to workers (and spouses) who lacked employer pension coverage. Income tax was deferred on both contribution and investment earnings. Annual contributions were limited to the smaller of $1,500 or 15% of earnings. Eligibility was expanded to all workers and their spouses by the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (PL 97-34). Annual contributions were limited to the smaller of $2,000 or 100% earnings. The Tax Reform Act Reform Act of 1986 (PL 99-514) continued tax deferral for IRA earnings, but it limited tax deferrals for contributions to those from: (1) tax filers with no employer plan (for either spouse); and (2) filers with employer pension coverage but whose adjusted gross income (AGI) is below specified limits. The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (PL 105-34) increased these AGI limits, allowed penalty-free early withdrawals for higher education expenses and first-home purchases, and authorised a new 'Roth IRA' to provide tax-free income from after-tax contributions and untaxed investment earnings. This book reviews the key details concerning these legal arrangements for retirement.

The great majority of working Americans are unprepared to face the difficult task of planning for retirement. In fact, the personal savings rate has been holding steady at zero for several years, down from 8 percent in the mid-1980s. "Overcoming the Saving Slump "explores the many challenges facing workers in the transition from a traditional defined benefit pension system to one that requires more individual responsibility, analyzing the considerable impediments to saving and evaluating financial literacy programs devised by employers and the government. Mapping the changing landscape of pensions and the rise of defined contribution plans, Annamaria Lusardi and others investigate new methods for stimulating saving and promoting financial education drawing on the experience of the United States as well as countries that have privatized their welfare systems, including Sweden and Chile. This timely volume pinpoints where human resources departments, the financial industry, and government officials have succeeded--or failed--in bridging the way to a new retirement system. As the workforce ages and more pensions disappear each second, Lusardi's findings will be invaluable for economists and anyone facing retirement.

For more than fifty years, pensions have been the subject of academic enquiry and controversy. Debates have raged over, amongst other things, the need for pensions, the means by which they might be delivered, their implications for the public finances, their impact on an individual's employment motivations and their significance for national and global capital markets. These debates, and others, have spawned a vast and disparate literature. Currently, the issue that most often exercises the minds of academics and policy makers is that of pension reform. It is widely recognized that decades of social and economic change have rendered obsolete the pension arrangements in many developed and developing countries. The question of what now constitutes an appropriate set of pension arrangements is, however, far from settled. Opinions are divided over whether existing national pension systems can be modified to make them fit contemporary needs and circumstances, or whether they should be jettisoned in favour of something entirely different. Central to the analysis of many issues in pension provision is the universal phenomenon of population ageing. Around the world, falling birth rates and rising life expectancy are raising the ratio of elderly to working-age people. For several decades the literature on pensions and population ageing has been extremely negative. Recently, though, a series of books and papers have appeared which argue for a more benign, less pessimistic, interpretation of population ageing. The papers and articles included in each volume of this new Routledge Major Work have been selected so as to reflect the multi-dimensional nature of the subject and the interest it has aroused internationally. With a full index and an introduction newly written by the editor, this four-volume collection is a unique and valuable research resource for both student and scholar alike.

The rancorous debate over the future of Social Security reached a fever pitch in 2005 when President Bush unsuccessfully proposed a plan for private retirement accounts. Although efforts to reform Social Security seem to have reached an impasse, the long-term problem the projected Social Security deficit remains. In Pension Puzzles, sociologists Melissa Hardy and Lawrence Hazelrigg explain for a general audience the fiscal challenges facing Social Security and explore the larger political context of the Social Security debate. Pension Puzzles cuts through the sloganeering of politicians in both parties, presenting Social Security s technical problems evenhandedly and showing how the Social Security debate is one piece of a larger political struggle. Hardy and Hazelrigg strip away the ideological baggage to explicate the basic terms and concepts needed to understand the predicament of Social Security. They compare the cases for privatizing Social Security and for preserving the program in its current form with adjustments to taxes and benefits, and they examine the different economic projections assumed by proponents of each approach. In pursuit of its privatization agenda, Hardy and Hazelrigg argue, the Bush administration has misled the public on an issue that was already widely misunderstood. The authors show how privatization proponents have relied on dubious assumptions about future rates of return to stock market investments and about the average citizen s ability to make informed investment decisions. In addition, the administration has painted the real but manageable shortfalls in Social Security revenue as a fiscal crisis. Projections of Social Security revenues and benefits by the Social Security Administration have treated revenues as fixed, when in fact they are determined by choices made by Congress. Ultimately, as Hardy and Hazelrigg point out, the clash over Social Security is about more than technical fiscal issues: it is part of the larger culture wars and the ideological struggle over what kind of social responsibilities and rights American citizens should have. This rancorous partisan wrangling, the alarmist talk about a crisis in Social Security, and the outright deception employed in this debate have all undermined the trust between citizens and government that is needed to restore the solvency of Social Security for future generations of retirees. Drawing together economic analyses, public opinion data, and historical narratives, Pension Puzzles is a lucid and engaging guide to the major proposals for Social Security reform. It is also an insightful exploration of what that debate reveals about American political culture in the twenty-first century."