News You Can Use: Treasury, IRS rule pension buyouts are illegal

Although past coverage in EBN offered proposals otherwise, pension plan buyouts have been deemed illegal by the Treasury Department and IRS. Under such arrangements, companies with imperiled or frozen defined benefit plans could sell them to a financially secure company to administer. Yet, while the agencies put the kibosh on plan buyouts under current law, they did lay out guidelines for legislation that would make the transfers legal.