{"id":1982,"date":"2025-09-29T19:08:02","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T19:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/u-s-budget-act-and-retirement-plans\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T19:08:02","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T19:08:02","slug":"u-s-budget-act-and-retirement-plans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/u-s-budget-act-and-retirement-plans\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Budget Act and Retirement Plans"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p>When Congress passed and President Trump signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 earlier this month, those monitoring developments in Washington, D.C. recognized that it not only ended a brief government shutdown but also dramatically increased government spending and raised the debt ceiling. However, few anticipated that the Budget Act would also impact tax-qualified retirement plans. Here\u2019s how it does.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Facilitates Hardship Withdrawals from Defined Contribution Plans<\/strong>. The Budget Act simplifies the rules surrounding hardship withdrawals in three significant ways, effective for plan years beginning December 31, 2018. First, participants will no longer be required to exhaust plan loan options before taking a hardship withdrawal. Second, the Act directs the Treasury Department to eliminate existing regulations that prevent participants who have taken hardship withdrawals from making contributions to their plans for six months following the withdrawal. Third, the funds available for hardship withdrawals will be expanded to include certain employer contributions and earnings, in addition to the elective deferrals currently permitted. It\u2019s important to note that these new rules are optional; plans may be amended to adopt them but are not mandated to do so.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Creates Select Committee on Multiemployer Pension Plans<\/strong>. The Budget Act establishes a bipartisan committee composed of eight House members and eight Senate members, tasked with addressing the solvency issues facing multiemployer pension plans and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. This committee is directed to provide recommendations to tackle the solvency crisis and propose legislation to implement these recommendations by the end of November 2018. Committee co-chairs are expected to be appointed by party leadership by February 23.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Allows Return of Improper IRS Levy<\/strong>. Under the provisions of the Budget Act, retirement plans\u2014including IRAs\u2014can allow individuals to recontribute amounts (plus interest) that were withdrawn from their plans due to improper IRS levies. This change provides a pathway for individuals to restore their retirement savings that may have been unintentionally impacted.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Provides Qualified Wildfire Distributions for Californians<\/strong>. The Budget Act permits qualified retirement plans to allow certain California residents affected by the devastating wildfires to receive distributions of up to $100,000 from eligible retirement plans without incurring the 10% early withdrawal penalty. These distributions can be recontributed to the plan within a three-year period and will be included in the participants\u2019 income over that same timeframe unless the participant opts for a different treatment. Additionally, plans can be amended to increase the loan amounts available to eligible participants and allow those with outstanding plan loans to delay repayment for one year. Furthermore, participants who took loans to purchase or build homes in wildfire-affected areas can return the loan amount to their retirement plans if the purchase or construction was canceled due to the wildfires.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When Congress passed and President Trump signed the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 earlier this month, those monitoring developments in Washington, D.C. recognized that it not only ended a brief government shutdown but also dramatically increased government spending and raised the debt ceiling. However, few anticipated that the Budget Act would also impact tax-qualified retirement [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1749,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-retirement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/igorsplayground.com\/appcheckr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}