#14 | Pension Planning

Practical Tax with Steve Moskowitz

In this week's episode of the Practical Tax Podcast, Steve Moskowitz sits down to discuss Pension Planning with Stephen Dobrow; the President of Primark Benefits. Steve Moskowitz and Stephen Dobrow have served clients of Moskowitz LLP for many years, as part of the Moskowitz tax planning and business services practices. Today, we will discuss why would a business owner, decision maker want to consider retirement plan, changes in law or procedures this year, key deadlines and some common questions. Listen to the full episode to learn more! Episode Transcript Intro: You're listening to the Practical Tax podcast with tax attorney Steve Moskowitz. The Practical Tax podcast is brought to you by Moskowitz LLP, a tax law firm. Liz Prehn Hello, welcome to Practical Tax. Today, we are discussing retirement plans with Steven Moskowitz and Stephen Dobrow. Stephen Dobrow is the President of Primark Benefits. A firm that provides pension consulting, plan administration, actuarial services and record keeping. As a retirement plan expert, Stephen regularly meets with Congress, the Treasury Department, the Department of Labor to advise and serve private retire systems. Steve Moskowitz and Stephen Dobrow have served clients of Moskowitz LLP for many years, as part of the Moskowitz tax planning and business services practices. Today, we will discuss why would a business owner, decision maker want to consider retirement plan, changes in law or procedures this year, key deadlines and some common questions. Steve Moskowitz: Welcome to all. Thank you for joining us. And Stephen, we've worked together so many years and here is a common question I hear all the time. You know what? I'm paying too much in taxes, I know there's some secret. I see all these big companies making way more than I do and not paying taxes. What's the secret? And the first thing I start off with is the big four in pensions. And the big fo- I'm gonna ask you to talk about the details in all of them. And the big four are saving taxes, not having to pay taxes on the income until you take it out of the plan. Cash flow, where unlike everything else, almost everything else we have to write the check by December 31st of year two. Here, there's a way to write the check in year two and still deduct it from year one. And asset protection, where if something bad happens to you, like you get sued, the plaintiff can't take away your pension. Although I hate to mention his name, the perfect example for this is OJ Simpson. So let's begin and Stephen, tell us about the pensions and all about the big four. Stephen Dobrow: Well, thank you. Primark Benefits has been doing retirement plans for now, 50 years here in the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area. And we have 34 employees, about 700 clients at any given time. What we do is take the retirement tax dollars you would normally send to the government and find a way to put it in the retirement plan just like what Steve was saying. You've heard of a 401k plan, you've heard of an IRA. Those are actually just two of 24 different types of retirement plans that a planned sponsor and employer can put in. And so the really secret is, and part of the answer to this question is, well, there's lots of choices and there's lots of ways that we can help and why would people want to get our help? Well, first of all, this is a lot about recruitment and retention. It's an employee benefit, you wanna take good care of your employees and you wanna be able to keep them, you wanna be able to get them. And Steve, you'll remember that just recently, I caterer came to us and he said, "You know, I'm having trouble attracting people to work at my catering business. And I really wanna have something that gets them to here, you know?" The catering business never offers benefits. If I offered benefits, that would be an attractive feature. And so we talked to him and he decided to set up a program where if people put in their money,