Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act of 2016

(This measure has not been amended since it was introduced. The summary of that version is repeated here.)

Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act of 2016

This bill amends the Internal Revenue Code and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) to modify requirements for tax-favored retirement savings accounts, employer-provided retirement plans, and retirement benefits for federal judges.

With respect to employer-provided plans, the bill modifies requirements regarding:

• multiple employer plans,
• automatic enrollment and nonelective contributions,
• hardship withdrawals,
• loans,
• rollovers,
• terminating or transferring plans,
• reporting and disclosure rules,
• nondiscrimination rules,
• selecting lifetime income providers, and
• Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation premiums.

The bill also increases the tax credit for small employer pension plan startup costs and allows a tax credit for small employers that establish retirement plans that include automatic enrollment.

With respect to Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), the bill:

• treats taxable non-tuition fellowship and stipend payments as compensation for the purpose of an IRA,
• repeals the maximum age for traditional IRA contributions, and
• permits any IRA to be a shareholder of any S corporation that is a bank.

The bill makes several modifications to retirement benefits for magistrate judges of the U.S. Tax Court and other federal judges.

The bill also modifies various tax provisions to:

• reinstate and increase the tax exclusion for benefits provided to volunteer firefighters and emergency medical responders;
• allow an employee to elect to defer, for income tax purposes, the inclusion in income of the amount of income attributable to certain stock transferred to the employee by the employer;
• revise the required distribution rules for pension plans;
• increase penalties for failing to file tax returns or retirement plan returns;
• prohibit increases in the user fees for installment agreements and waive the fees for certain low-income taxpayers;
• require the Internal Revenue Service to share certain return and return information with U.S. Customs Border Protection; and
• repeal a provision that provides for the technical termination of partnerships.

Written by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. All summary versions on Congress.gov