Keep your eye on tax changes
At its June meeting, the PEF Retirees Executive Board elected statewide officers.
The Board elected Region 2 Chapter President Dave Grier statewide vice-president. James Adsit, chapter president of Region 4, was elected secretary, and I was elected president for another two-year term. As I begin my fourth term, I look forward to the extension and further development of our retiree organization, which exists mainly to protect and improve its members’ benefits at both the state and federal levels.
We want to thank Lorraine Ballard of our New York City Chapter, for her services of the past six years as our statewide vice president.
Deferred-comp rules change
The federal Tax Law governing deferred-compensation plans was recently amended. This complex legislation changes Section 457 provisions to allow rollover of plan distributions to individual retirement accounts.
So far, I have not been able to find out conclusively if this change could affect those of us who were required to decide when we retired, whether to take all of our deferred-compensation distribution as a lump-sum payment at age 70 or spread the distribution over 10 years of payments.
More property-tax breaks?
Co-STAR is a new state program proposed by Gov. George Pataki, which would use state tax revenues to reduce county real-property taxes for seniors. However, this proposal is one of many fiscal issues not resolved in the “baseline” state budget passed by the Legislature in August.
Basically, homeowners who qualify for the existing “Enhanced STAR” Program would also qualify for Co-STAR. Enhanced STAR recipients must be at least 65 years of age with incomes under $60,000.