Description: A discussion of the three private letter rulings addressing the tax treatment of group insurance contingent annuity contracts providing guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefits linked to an investment account released by the Internal Revenue Service.

Description: Summarizes IRS private letter ruling PLR 200818018, released Jan. 29, 2008, related to treatment of certain payments under Immediate VAs as SEPPs, and discusses its significance.

Description: Draft Pre-Need Model proposed by National Association of Insurance Commissioners, NAIC, is analyzed from tax standpoint of both insurers, through sec. 807, and policyholders, through secs. 7702 and 7702A.

Description: A discussion of tail-design LTC riders for annuities and how contract cash values are offset by reductions to the annuity contract. LTC benefits, and how they relate to the annuity contracts, are also discussed.

Description: Summary of private letter ruling the IRS released in February 2013 regarding a partnership formed to hold and manage bank-owned life insurance contracts. The article follows up another article from the same authors in the May 2012 issue of Taxing Times regarding an earlier ruling on a similar structure.

Description: Discusses earlier IRS rulings on Contingent Deferred Annuities and the latest ones, PLRs 201117012 and 201117013. Highlights two important additional issues covered in latest rulings.

Description: The article summarizes PLRs 201515001 and 201519001, in which the IRS addressed the treatment of a non-qualified deferred annuity contract under the investor control doctrine and other applicable rules. The contract provides a guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit and investment options that correspond to “public” mutual funds. The IRS concluded that the investor control doctrine will apply to treat the contract purchaser as the owner of the mutual fund shares for federal income tax purposes. The IRS also addressed certain other tax aspects of the arrangement. The effect of the rulings is that the contract will be taxed similarly to a contingent deferred annuity (where the policyholder holds the mutual fund shares in his or her own brokerage account), while being structured like a traditional deferred variable annuity (where the insurance company holds the shares in its separate account).

Description: The IRS believes that any segregated asset account comprised of a pool of individual securities will run afoul of the investor control doctrine. This article articulates that such a conclusion would be deeply flawed based on the administrative, congressional, and judicial precedents involving the investor control doctrine.

Description: Clarification of the tax treatment of non-qualified deferred annuities that are “partially annuitized” is discussed in detail in this article.

Description: Full version of Taxing Times, February 2007, Volume 3, Issue No. 1.