Five Common 409A Design Errors: #4 No Six-Month Delay for Public Company Terminations
March 20, 2012
Authored by: benefitsbclp
This post is the fourth in our benefitsbclp.com series on five common Code Section 409A design errors and corrections. Go here, here and here to see the first three posts in that series.
Code Section 409A is, in part, a response to perceived deferred compensation abuses at companies like Enron and WorldCom. The story of Code Section 409A’s six month delay provision is inextricably tied to the Enron and WorldCom bankruptcies.
Under established IRS tax principles, participants’ rights under a non-qualified plan can be no greater than the claims of a general creditor. Because deferred compensation plans often pay out upon termination of employment, a plan participant with knowledge of a likely future bankruptcy could potentially terminate employment and take a non-qualified plan distribution to the detriment of the company’s creditors (a number or Enron executives with advance knowledge of Enron’s accounting irregularities did just this). This opportunistic cash out is obviously unfair to the company’s creditors. In addition, the cash out only helps hasten the likely bankruptcy because non-qualified plan payments come from the general assets of the company.
How did Congress solve this problem? By requiring that a payment of deferred compensation to any of the most highly compensated employees of public companies (called “specified employees”) be delayed at least six months if the payment is due to a separation from service. The thought was that for public companies (like Enron and WorldCom), plan participants would not have enough time to