Nancy L. Johnson: “As a result of our arcane and complicated pension laws, 70 million workers have no pension plan. Unfortunately…”

“As a result of our arcane and complicated pension laws, 70 million workers have no pension plan. Unfortunately, Americans who work in small businesses are much less likely to have pension coverage than those who work for larger companies. Among companies with fewer than 100 employees, as many as 80% of the workforce have no retirement savings plan available to them. The primary cause: small business owners find the cost and complexity of setting up and maintaining retirement plans to be overwhelming. So last year, Congress passed the Portman-Cardin pension reforms to help workers save for their future and enable small businesses to offer pension plans to their employees. The changes we made streamline and simplify the complex rules governing our pension system to ensure meaningful coverage of small business employees. They will reduce the administrative burden on small businesses and provide incentives to help them establish plans for their workers, including cutting the IRS user fee small businesses have to pay to establish a pension plan and lowering premiums small businesses pay for their defined benefit plans to make that option more attractive. Several years ago we adopted 'SIMPLE' pension plans. That has enabled numerous small companies in my district to offer plans to their employees.”