Tax Equity And Financial Responsibility Acts Of 1982 And 1983 (TEFRA)
Legislation that redefined life insurance and raised taxes on life insurance companies. Among the provisions were new rules for some life insurance products, including a definition of flexible premium life insurance, and an increase in life insurance company taxes. Congress was concerned that a policyholder could take a substantial amount, say $1 million, and, after putting a few dollars toward a life insurance premium, put the remainder into a tax-free investment vehicle. One of two tests had to be satisfied for a policy to qualify as life insurance: the cash surrender value policy could not exceed a net single premium, and the death benefit had to represent a certain percentage of the cash value, which declined as the policy-holder got older. For example, at age 40, the death benefit must be 140% of cash value. The second rule closed a loophole on tax-free withdrawals from annuities. Prior to 1982 annuity holders could withdraw their initial premium tax free at any time. The 1982 code decreed that any money withdrawn from an annuity would be considered income first and would therefore be taxable. The older 1959 tax code devised a shorthand formula for determining taxes paid by insurers. The formula worked when interest rates were low, but as they soared, insurers found ways to reduce the increased tax bite. The 1982 code introduced a stopgap measure designed to raise taxes on life insurers by $3 billion.
Popular Insurance Terms
Transfer of highly individualized loss exposures that is not based on the usual pooling principles of insurance such as risk identification and classification selection. Rather than setting ...
Maximum age of an applicant or insured beyond which an insurance company will not initially underwrite a risk or continue to insure it. For example, under some forms of renewable term life ...
Deferred annuity under which one premium payment is made and the annuity is paid up (no further premium payments are required). ...
Methods by which a home office underwriter chooses applicants that an insurer will accept. The underwriter's job is to spread the costs equitably among members of the group to be insured. ...
Section providing protection in four areas: Coverage A (Home) the structure of the home (basic contract amount). Other property coverages in Section I are expressed as a percentage of ...
Fund in a segregated account to provide for the return of unearned premiums on policies that are canceled. ...
Federal statute defining the federal tax code, covering such topics as credits against tax; business-related credits; computing credit for investment in certain depreciable property; ...
Financial instruments whose principal and income are not established in advance according to contractual terms set forth in the financial instruments document. Both the principal and income ...
Clause in an insurance policy that provides for the payment of a monetary sum to the individual (s) who incurred the loss. ...
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