The Retirement Benefits Tax Guide (3rd Edition) is a comprehensive, answer-oriented source of practical information on federal taxation of retirement benefits. It approaches the subject from the perspectives of:

• (1) participants in retirement plans:
• (2) beneficiaries of deceased participants in retirement plans;
• (3) professional advisors of plan participants and beneficiaries; and
• (4) employers and plan administrators who advise employees of federal tax ramifications of these retirement plans.

The Retirement Benefits Tax Guide focuses on distributions and how they are taxed in the hands of participants and beneficiaries. Except as they relate to distributions, the Guide does not examine, in any detail, the requirements that must be met if a retirement plan, its sponsoring employer, and its employee participants are to qualify for the various types of special tax treatment that are extended to "qualified" plans. However, it does provide a background in qualification matters necessary for the understanding of the tax treatment of benefits. Although the deductions that are available for employer contributions to retirement plans are not within the scope of this book, it does carefully examine when and how those contributions are taxed to employees and their beneficiaries.

In addition to detailed coverage of distributions from qualified retirement plans (employer-sponsored plans meeting the requirements of Code Sec. 401(a)), the Guide examines distributions from IRAs, SEPs, SIMPLE retirement plans, Roth IRAs, TSAs, and nonqualified plans of both the funded and unfunded varieties (including unfunded deferred compensation plans of state and local governments and other tax-exempt employers--so-called section 457 plans).

Benefits covered include annuities, lump-sum distributions, rollovers, in-service distributions, noncash distributions, loans, life-insurance protection, disability benefits, death benefits, and miscellaneous post-retirement distributions. Federal taxation of social security and railroad retirement benefits is the subject of a separate chapter, as are the disposition of benefits in divorce or separation and the taxation of foreign participants in domestic plans and domestic participants in foreign plans.Rules requiring minimum distribution are fully explored as are the various restrictions on benefits and distributions imposed by law. A final chapter covers the planning of distributions from both income and estate tax perspectives.

Highlights of the 2006 Edition

This supplement to the CCH Retirement Benefits Guide, written by revision editor Theodore Simons, Jr., J.D., former Managing Editor of the CCH Pension Plan Guide, updates the text to reflect major new developments from the late Winter of 2005 through the early Spring of 2006

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