Employer-sponsored retirement plans, generally referred to in the aggregate as qualified employee plans, constitute one of the important "legs" of the retirement stool that individuals look to for their income in retirement. The other two legs of that stool are personal savings-through investment in securities, deferred annuities, savings accounts, etc.-and Social Security retirement benefits. This course will examine qualified employee plans, their limits and their tax treatment along with a discussion of annuities and their taxation.

This course examines the qualified plan limits and income taxability of employer and employee contributions (including designated Roth account contributions); plan loans; life insurance contained in the plan; plan distributions, including distributions as periodic payments and nonperiodic payments; required minimum distributions; and rollovers. The course also examines the tax treatment of lump-sum distributions and periodic payments received under commercial annuity contracts.

After completing this course, students will be able to:

• recognize the tax treatment of nonqualified annuity distributions
  
• distinguish between the types of qualified employee plans
• recognize the limits imposed on qualified employee plan contributions and benefits
  
• apply the federal tax laws to qualified employee plan contributions and distributions
  
• list the requirements applicable to qualified employee plan loans
  
• recognize the changes made to retirement plans and pensions by the SECURE Act and the CARES Act
  
• identify the tax treatment of annuity contributions and distributions
  

CPAs, EAs, and other financial and tax professionals