This just in: President Obama signed the Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and Pension Relief Act today. Title I of the Act is about Medicare physician reimbursements, and Title II is about pension funding relief.
The funding relief is in the form of extended shortfall amortization periods. Employers who choose to can take more than the usual seven years to pay off a funding deficit.
There’s a catch, though. Several catches, actually. If you take the relief, you have to notify the PBGC and all your plan participants. And you have to make extra pension plan contributions if you pay any employee more than $1 million, pay extraordinary dividends or buy back an unusual amount of company stock.
[…] 2011-3. This Notice provides guidance on single-employer defined benefit plan elections under the Pension Relief Act of 2010. The Notice provides that the deadline for electing to extend the amortization period is the […]