Practice Groups

Plan Design and Taxation
Representative Engagements

Drawing on our extensive experience with the IRS, we offer our clients straight talk and practical advice on federal tax matters relating to employee benefit programs and tax-exempt organizations. Whether conducting IRS compliance audits for major employers, revising plans to lessen their exposure to legal attack, or working with insurance companies and financial firms to develop new products and services for employee benefit programs, we are committed to providing our clients with concrete, real-world solutions to employee benefit challenges. In the past year alone, we have:

•	Obtained favorable IRS rulings on an innovative and widely publicized stock option transfer program of a leading US company and Wall Street investment house.

•	Devised patented, tax-effective and legally compliant programs for funding executive and retiree health benefits using variable life insurance.

•	Designed and obtained favorable IRS rulings on a variety of features to enable sponsors of qualified plans to maximize the use of surplus pension assets to provide retiree health supplements, life insurance, severance, executive and other valuable benefits not traditionally associated with pension plans.

•	Devised innovative arrangements (including the use of life insurance and annuities, rabbi trusts and secular trusts) for funding executive compensation programs ranging from supplemental retirement and savings plans and deferred income arrangements to stock option and other stock-based plans as well as long-term incentive programs.

•	Structured change-in-control and golden parachute arrangements to protect the benefits of key employees.

An Innovative Design for Funding Employee Accounts During Disability
When one of our clients approached us for assistance in reviewing a consultant's proposal to allow 401(k) plans to purchase insurance so that the 401(k) accounts of the client’s employees would continue to be funded during periods of disability, we provided expert advice on how to structure the program to maximize both legal compliance and the potential for success, and we obtained a ground-breaking IRS ruling that provided favorable tax treatment to every facet of the plan and to all its participants.

We also drafted a comprehensive "white paper" that employers and administrators interested in adopting a similar approach now use extensively to assist their own counsel in evaluating the many ERISA and tax issues associated with the innovation.

We designed this solution to a challenging and important income security problem by working as a team at Groom—and intensively with our clients—to address the needs of all parties, including insurers, administrators, federal agencies, employers, and employees.

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