Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
I.R.S. Reversal on ‘Church’ Pension Plan Rescues a Fund
I.R.S. Reversal on ‘Church’ Pension Plan Rescues a Fund
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
The Internal Revenue Service has taken an unusual step to rescue the pensions of more than 700 people whose fund was about to run out of money...All the employees once worked at the Hospital Center at Orange, a New Jersey hospital that succumbed to financial troubles in 2004 and was closed. Late last month, after negotiations and an eight-year internal review, the I.R.S. reversed a critical decision it made in 2003 — just before the hospital closed — to recognize the hospital’s pension fund as a “church plan” under law.
That decision took away the former employees’ government safety net because the Constitution’s church-state separation was said to bar the federal pension insurance program from covering church pensions.
<...>
The employees were astonished because the Hospital Center at Orange had existed for more than 100 years as a free-standing secular institution with no connection to any church or religion. Only in 1998 had it entered into an affiliation with Cathedral Healthcare System, a corporation of the Archdiocese of Newark. Even then, the affiliation did not require Cathedral to assume the Hospital Center at Orange’s pension plan.
“The I.R.S. should never have granted the plan ‘church’ status in the first place,” said Karen Ferguson, director of the Pension Rights Center.
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/business/an-irs-reversal-rescues-a-pension-fund.html
By MARY WILLIAMS WALSH
The Internal Revenue Service has taken an unusual step to rescue the pensions of more than 700 people whose fund was about to run out of money...All the employees once worked at the Hospital Center at Orange, a New Jersey hospital that succumbed to financial troubles in 2004 and was closed. Late last month, after negotiations and an eight-year internal review, the I.R.S. reversed a critical decision it made in 2003 — just before the hospital closed — to recognize the hospital’s pension fund as a “church plan” under law.
That decision took away the former employees’ government safety net because the Constitution’s church-state separation was said to bar the federal pension insurance program from covering church pensions.
<...>
The employees were astonished because the Hospital Center at Orange had existed for more than 100 years as a free-standing secular institution with no connection to any church or religion. Only in 1998 had it entered into an affiliation with Cathedral Healthcare System, a corporation of the Archdiocese of Newark. Even then, the affiliation did not require Cathedral to assume the Hospital Center at Orange’s pension plan.
“The I.R.S. should never have granted the plan ‘church’ status in the first place,” said Karen Ferguson, director of the Pension Rights Center.
- more -
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/business/an-irs-reversal-rescues-a-pension-fund.html
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
