A new report by the American Benefits Institute and Mathew Greenwald & Associates has found that curtailing the current tax treatment of contributions that workers and their employers make to 401(k) plans will "significantly reduce" employers' willingness to sponsor plans. 

The survey comes after 11 senators signed onto a resoultion calling for the protection of retirement benefits in the tax code in any deal to avoid the fiscal cliff.

The survey of more than 500 companies, which was conducted by Greedwald & Associates in partnership with the American Benefits Institute, which is the educational and research arm of the American Benefits Council, found that "virtually all employers polled (91 percent) believe the exclusion of 401(k) contributions from current income taxation is important to their workers' decision to contribute to the plan and seven in ten employers (72 percent) think their workers contribute more than they otherwise would as a result of the exclusion," noted James Klein, president of ABC.

Continue Reading for Free

Register and gain access to:

  • Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Melanie Waddell

Melanie is senior editor and Washington bureau chief of ThinkAdvisor. Her ThinkAdvisor coverage zeros in on how politics, policy, legislation and regulations affect the investment advisory space. Melanie’s coverage has been cited in various lawmakers’ reports, letters and bills, and in the Labor Department’s fiduciary rule in 2024. In 2019, Melanie received an Honorable Mention, Range of Work by a Single Author award from @Folio. Melanie joined Investment Advisor magazine as New York bureau chief in 2000. She has been a columnist since 2002. She started her career in Washington in 1994, covering financial issues at American Banker. Since 1997, Melanie has been covering investment-related issues, holding senior editorial positions at American Banker publications in both Washington and New York. Briefly, she was content chief for Internet Capital Group’s EFinancialWorld in New York and wrote freelance articles for Institutional Investor. Melanie holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Towson University. She interned at The Baltimore Sun and its suburban edition.