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 The 1982 code decreed that any money withdrawn from an annuity would be considered income first and would therefore be taxable.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
Government agency, under the McCarran-Ferguson act (public law 15), that has no authority over insurance matters to the extent the states regulate insurance to the satisfaction of Congress. ...
Factor applied in retrospective rating in order to increase the basic premium to cover state premium taxes for liability and workers compensation insurance. For example, if a state premium ...
Type of term life insurance policy that has a face amount that increases to a predetermined sum and then decreases to zero at the termination point of the policy, while at the same time ...
Life insurance rate determined by the valuation of company policy reserves. State regulators set strict standards for policy reserves to make certain that life insurers will have enough ...
New pension-accounting rule (Employers Accounting for Post retirement Benefits Other Than Pensions) which mandates that employers that provide post retirement benefits to include life ...
Excess coverage over the first layer of medical insurance to provide for catastrophic medical payments. The first layer may be either group or individual medical insurance, or an individual ...
Market in which buyers dominate trading and force financial asset prices up. ...
Rights of employees who leave an employer with a qualified plan to withdraw their accumulated benefits. With a contributory plan, employees have immediate rights to their own contributions, ...
Single payment or periodic payments that are made to purchase an annuity. ...
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