Description: Owners of nonqualified annuity contracts, individuals under qualified retirement plans, and annuity issuers are left without any published guidance on when annuity payments can be used to satisfy the SEPP [Substantially Equal Periodic Payments] exceptions to the 10 percent penalty tax under sections 72q2D and 72t2Aiv. This article discusses that problem. The insurance industry requested guidance on this issue.8

Description: IRS published final regulations on updated life expectancy and distribution period tables used for determining RMDs. The article intends to provide an overview on the development of the final regulations and highlight the key updates in final regulations, the transition rules to apply final regulations and some of the relevant issues not addressed in final regulations (e.g. MITT, Rev. Rul. 2002-62 and Notice 2004-15). The article also briefly discusses what financial institutions and actuaries would like to do before the regulations become effective on Jan. 1, 2022.

Description: This article discusses the temporary waiver and how it provides only limited relief from the section 401a9 minimum distribution requirements.

Description: A discussion of, first, the three-year transition period for adopting principle-based reserves and how it might not apply to tax reserves, and second, the tax impact of adding investment options to in-force contracts.

Description: This article provides a short history of the correction procedures previously developed to address compliance failures and the shortcomings of those procedures under sections 101f and 7702, laying the foundation for a sea change in the correction process.

Description: Primer on the federal income taxation of nonqualified annuities

Description: The proposed regulations define a class of products known as “qualifying longevity annuity contracts” (QLACs), which are excluded from the account balance used to determine required minimum distributions. By exempting longevity annuities (up to a specified limit) from the RMD rules, it is hoped that it will provide individuals under defined-contribution plans the option to use an “affordable” portion of their account balance to purchase a longevity annuity. The proposed regulations apply to tax-qualified defined-contribution plans under section 401(a), section 403(b), individual retirement annuities and accounts (IRAs) under section 408, and eligible governmental section 457 plans.

Description: Update on a broad range of insurance and investment tax matters upon which ACLI is working, including: deficiency reserve guidance, IRS guidance on PBR/AG 43, Camp Financial Product Discussion Draft, FATCA and changes to non-forfeiture laws due to low interest rates

Description: Updates on partial annuitization and exhanges, prevailing CSO valuation mortality tables, disclosure of offshore accounts through FATCA.

Description: This article begins with an overview of how the tax treatment of partial exchanges has evolved over the last decade or so, including the concerns that led the Service to resist giving taxpayers carte blanche on such transactions.The new guidance shortens from 12 to six months the window following a partial exchange in which the transaction could be called into question, and simplifies the regime by de-linking it from the exceptions to the section 72q penalty tax.4 Finally, the guidance provides coordination with recent partial annuitization legislation and answers to other open issues. This article then summarizes Rev. Proc. 2011-38 and elaborates on why the features outlined above are important and helpful improvements over prior guidance.