Retirement planning

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has released a new online toolkit to help preparers and auditors of state and local government pension plans implement new accounting and financial reporting standards.

The Internal Revenue Service released the annual cost-of-living adjustments Thursday affecting dollar limitations for pension plans and other retirement-related items for tax year 2014, allowing taxpayers to contribute up to $17,500 to their 401(k) plans in 2014.

A measure that would put the brakes on the Department of Labor's proposal to establish a fiduciary standard for advisors to retirement plans was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in a largely party-line vote on Tuesday.

Congress should consolidate and simplify the types of tax-favored retirement plans now available to small business owners to minimize the cost and administrative burden imposed by the plans, the American Institute of CPAs told Congress.

Investing is a complex undertaking. The supply of investment alternatives is seemingly endless. Evaluating various alternatives can be quite difficult and very time consuming.

A majority of large U.S. corporate pension plans were underfunded at the end of 2012, but Fitch Ratings said Thursday it believes funding levels at mid-year have improved with recent discount rate increases and strong equity market performance.

Governmental Accounting Standards Board chairman David Vaudt talks about his plans as GASB's new leader and the board's agenda for pension standards, post-employment benefits in the retiree health care area, and the need to provide useful information for elected officials and government policymakers, in an interview with Accounting Today editor-in-chief Daniel Hood.

The Internal Revenue Service has updated its static mortality tables for use by defined benefit pension plans in calculating the life expectancies of retirees.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is issuing a new accounting standards update on Monday that defers indefinitely certain disclosures about investments held by nonpublic employee benefit plans in their plan sponsors’ own nonpublic equity securities.

Nearly 70 percent of people in the Millennial generation have no retirement plan, according to a new survey.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has issued for public comment a proposed statement regarding the transition provisions of GASB’s new pension standards for state and local governments with the goal of eliminating a potential source of understatement of restated beginning net position and expense in a government’s first year of implementing GASB’s new pension accounting standards.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is reportedly pressing PricewaterhouseCoopers and other major accounting firms to drop their longstanding mandatory retirement age policies, and the American Institute of CPAs is asking them to stop.

Almost half of CPAs indicated that they offer some kind of financial planning services, but a far smaller number have a formally structured practice with their own Registered Investment Advisor or an affiliation with an outside broker/dealer or RIA, according to a new study.

CPA firms are wrestling their way through partner retirements and the accompanying succession issues in numbers that the profession has never seen before.

Members of Generation X are having the most difficulty meeting their household expenses and dealing with other financial obligations, according to a new study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

For years, annuities have been considered to be a solution for outliving your income and available assets.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted Wednesday to indefinitely defer certain disclosures about investments held by a nonpublic employee benefit plan in its plan sponsor’s own nonpublic equity securities.

Seven out of 10 U.S. adults claim to have major barriers that prevent their families from openly communicating about who will make financial decisions on behalf of their aging family members if they become unable to do so, according to a new survey.

IMGCAP(1)]Check out the digital edition of the June 2013 issue of Accounting Today.

A pair of lawmakers have introduced a bipartisan bill in the House that would provide relief to nonprofits, such as the Girl Scouts, which now have higher pension funding rules than taxable, for-profit companies.