Pension Focus to feature IRS pension expert

Pension Focus, a not-for-profit group created and staffed by Pension Consultants Inc., is presenting the Pension Focus 2006 Conference May 4–5 in Branson.

According to Chris Thixton, Pension Focus conference administrator, the two-day event is intended to better educate the approximately 100 attendees about the latest news and best options for their companies’ qualified retirement plans.

“It gives them a very hands-on, practical approach, so that they can go back to their place of business and operate their plan,” Thixton said. “It’s not so technical that they have to worry about every little minute test and tax code. It’s (intended) to provide a broad overview of things going on in the industry that they need to be aware of so that when they’re administering their plan, they know what’s going on.”

The event has been in Branson each year since its inception in 1996; there was no conference in 2000. This year’s event is at the Chateau on the Lake, where it has been held since 1998.

Margo Jarrell-Hankey, director of human resources for CoxHealth, will be attending the conference for the third time.

“There are a lot of issues that you have to know in order to do a pension plan and do it right – a lot of things that are hidden,” she said.

“The conference is great at bringing in experts in the field who can inform us of things that have changed and new things coming up,” she added.

One of the speakers coming in for this year’s event is Carol Gold, director of employee plans in the Internal Revenue Service’s Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division.

Gold will address the ways that companies can prepare if their retirement plans are chosen for an audit; she said the IRS will perform about 9,000 full audits in fiscal year 2006, plus an additional 2,000 informal correspondence audits.

Gold said that while all sectors of the pension industry are subject to possible audits, the IRS is looking at certain segments that have had compliance issues in recent years.

“We have focused our examination efforts on certain areas. There have, in the past few years, been certain areas of abuse with respect to retirement plans, particularly with insurance-funded plans and (employee stock ownership plans) maintained by subject corporations,” Gold said.

“Then, because of funding issues with large defined benefit pension plans, we’ve also been focusing on pension funding issues,” she added.

Gold said that programs such as the Pension Focus conference are important in enabling the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division to foster better relationships with the companies it deals with.

“Employers … have chosen to voluntarily subject themselves to a certain regulatory scheme by offering retirement plans, and we’re very interested in helping them through that process,” she said. “It’s a very cooperative relationship, and to the extent that someone doesn’t think of the IRS that way, I would invite them to come to a seminar like this so that we can explain how in this particular arena, where companies have chosen to do something good, we’re there to help them.”

Pension Focus’ Thixton agreed, adding that passing on impartial knowledge such as the information provided by Gold and the other speakers at the conference is the whole idea behind the not-for-profit group.

“So many times, plan sponsors get their information from product vendors or somebody who’s selling something,” he said.

“With the lineup of people that come in here, they get (information) from the people who are actually making it happen and not salespeople.”

Registration is still open for the Pension Focus 2006 Conference. Those interested can register on the the conference Web site, www.pensionfocus.org; the early registration deadline is April 24.