The American Benefits Council: Recommendations on Stock Plans

Issued in September, the American Benefits Council's document A Vision for 2020: Flexibility and the future of Employee Benefits (PDF) includes recommendations across a wide array of benefits issues. Many of the recommendations are based on their observation that "The average time spent in retirement has also lengthened from 9.6 years in 1970 to 17.6 years today for men and from 14 years to 20.6 years for women over that same period" (p. 5). Two of their recommendations cover company stock in benefit plans: recommendation 4.h is to "[m]aintain the availability of company stock to employees as an investment alternative in a retirement plan" and 4.i is to "[s]upport the flexibility to use stock-based compensation as part of an employee benefit package designed to recruit and retain talent," in which they specifically proposed "clarifying the tax withholding treatment of statutory stock options, exempting incentive stock options from the Alternative Minimum Tax and encouraging Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) dividend reinvestment."