Faculty Activities & Publications | March 2013

Professor Kathryn J. Kennedy

Activities

She was interviewed for the April 12, 2013, article “IRS Marks Employers’ Internal Controls a Priority in Employee Plans Audit” published in Bloomberg BNA Pension & Benefits Daily providing background information regarding the 2012 ACT Report. As a past member of the Employee Plans Subcommittee of the IRS Tax Exempt/Government Entities Professor Kennedy helped prepare the report “Analysis and Recommendations Regarding the Scope of the Employee Plans Examination Process,”  in June 2012. That report focused on the importance of a plan’s internal controls during an IRS plan examination.

She was quoted in the April 12, 2013, Tax Analysts’ article “Budget Proposal Would Not Directly Cap Retirement Accounts” on the Obama Administration’s proposal to cap contributions and accruals in tax-favored retirement accounts to $3 million. The administration used the current defined benefit annual annuity limit of $205,000 at age 65 to determine its value of $3 million. She pointed out that if government analysts used the current defined contribution annual limit of $51,000 over a 40-year period, at an interest rate of five percent, they would have produced a value closer to $6 million. Once the limit was reached, excess contributions or accruals would be treated like excessive deferrals, resulting in includable taxation income for the individual. She argued that such a record-keeping burden would be difficult for employees with such retirement accounts and sends an entirely wrong message when the average person is simply not saving enough.

 

Professor Debra Pogrund Stark

Publications

Her article, “Ineffective in Any Form: How Confirmation Bias and Distractions Undermine Improved Home-Loan Disclosures” co-authored with Jessica M. Choplin & Mark A. LeBoeuf, appeared in the Yale Law Journal On-Line in the April 16, 2013, issue.

The essay examines three experiments that tracked eye fixations as participants reviewed home-loan disclosure forms.

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