This premier event offers a deep dive into the latest legislative updates, regulatory changes, and best practices for advising benefit plans specific to tax-exempt and governmental employers.
Join us online for a comprehensive exploration of plan provisions, human resources considerations, employment agreements, and plan operations.
Gain invaluable insights from 14 invited representatives from the IRS and Department of Labor, plus expert practitioners, ERISA litigators, and in-house counsel.
SECURE Act 2.0 hot topics, including the new proposed Required Minimum Distribution guidance, mandatory Roth catch-ups, and long-term part-time employees
Executive exit strategies, including non-compete clauses and nondisclosure agreements
EPCRS update
Health and welfare update, including short-term limited duration insurance, HIPAA privacy, MHPAEA, and No Surprises Act implementation
Final guidance on RMDs and strategies to address forfeiture rules changes
Potential impact of the Loper Bright/Relentless decision on creation of rules and regulations as well as in pending litigation, including challenges to DOL guidance on 401(k) plan investing and the definition of a retirement investment fiduciary
DOL exemption projects
Governmental and church plan update
Legislative update
Get a head start on what these and other key legal and regulatory developments and enforcement efforts mean for your employee benefits clients today and well into the future.
If you provide legal counsel and guidance on plan administration for any employer sponsoring an employee benefit plan — particularly 501(c)(3) and governmental employers — you don’t want to miss this annual virtual program.
Register Now! Be fully prepared to navigate both critical developments and future challenges with confidence, and bring value to your clients with your elevated expertise!
Many family business owners aspire to see their enterprises thrive for generations but often overlook the critical planning required. Others lack the expertise to integrate business and tax decisions into a cohesive succession plan. In these cases, family businesses rely on expert legal counsel for guidance.
Gain focused analysis, practical approaches, and innovative solutions to tax, business, and estate planning challenges from our expert faculty. Improve your clients’ chances of achieving long term generational wealth.
Walk away with resources designed to help clients thrive in today’s market; the succession planning tools needed to foster prosperity beyond current owners; and insights on how to plan and prepare for smoother exits when family dynamics or market demands present insurmountable obstacles.
Don’t miss this opportunity to stay ahead in your practice and provide exceptional service to your family business clients. Join us to gain actionable insights and network with peers and industry leaders who share your commitment to excellence in estate planning.
Most of us who have attended a university or made a donation to a favorite charity have received an invitation to enter into a charitable gift annuity contract (CGA) to support the organization. But many lawyers who practice in the estate planning field are unfamiliar with the CGAs, despite their popularity with so many charities. Maybe that is because with the CGA there is nothing for the practicing lawyer to draft. Or maybe it is because unlike charitable remainder annuity trusts (CRATs) and charitable remainder unitrusts (CRUTs), you will find no mention of the CGA in the Internal Revenue Code, except for one mention in connection with debt-financed property for unrelated business taxable income purposes. But a CGA can be a valuable tool for clients interested both in maintaining an income stream for themselves or others and helping their favorite charity.
A typical CRAT pays income to one or more noncharitable beneficiaries for a life or lives, with the remainder eventually passing to charity. Similarly, the gift annuity pays a fixed annuity to one or more individuals for life, but there is no trust. Instead, the gift annuity is paid to the annuitant directly by the charity from its general assets and the transaction is treated for charitable deduction purposes as a bargain sale—a part gift, part sale.
In bargain sales, the donor transfers cash or property to a charity in exchange for consideration worth less than the cash or property transferred. The excess of the fair market value of the transferred property over the consideration received from the charity is deductible as a charitable contribution. If appreciated property is contributed for the annuity, the donor pays tax on the sale portion and can deduct the gift portion. With a gift annuity, the donor transfers cash or property to a charity in exchange for the charity’s unsecured promise to pay a fixed annuity to the donor or another individual for life. The excess of the value contributed over the actuarial value of the annuity received in exchange is deductible as a charitable contribution. If appreciated property is used to purchase the gift annuity, gain is also recognized on the sale portion, but the gain is spread out over the lifetime of the annuitant if the donor is the annuitant.
Although CRATs and CRUTs can’t be administered economically for less than $100,000 or $200,000, CGAs are issued by many charities for as little as $5,000 or $10,000 because there is no trust to administer. CGA donors contemplating a gift annuity should keep in mind that the annuitant is simply an unsecured creditor of the charity, so consideration of the financial health of the charity is important.
Most charities issue gift annuities at age-based maximum rates suggested by the American Council on Gift Annuities (ACGA). This century-old organization sets recommended maximum annuity rates which change from time to time depending on market economic conditions and are structured so that if the charity has a large enough annuity pool to spread the mortality risk, about half of each annuity should on average be left for the charity at the end of the annuitant’s life.
What benefits besides the fixed annuity does the CGA donor receive? First, the donor receives an income tax charitable deduction for the excess of the fair market value of the annuity over the amount of cash or property transferred to the charity in exchange for the annuity. The value of the retained annuity is determined by IRS actuarial tables which assume an interest rate (the so-called 7520 rate or Charitable Monthly Federal Rate) which varies from month to month. The second benefit the donor receives is that a portion of the gift is generally income-tax free, just as it would be with a commercial annuity. The portion of each annuity payment which is a nontaxable return of basis is larger when the gift is made with cash than when the gift is made with appreciated property.
Let’s consider a gift annuity purchased by a 75-year-old donor. Assume that the gift is made in January 2024, using the IRS January interest rate of 5.2 percent, and further assume that the payments are made quarterly at the end of each quarter.
In the first example, we have a donor who contributes $100,000 in cash for a gift annuity with her favorite charity. The current ACGA maximum suggested annuity rate for a donor aged 75 is seven percent, so the donor’s annual annuity would be $7,000 per year. According to IRS tables, the annuity is worth $60,737. Subtracting that from $100,000 gives us the charitable deduction of $39,263.
CLICK HERE to read the full article, which was originally published in ALI CLE’s The Practical Lawyer.
To find our more about ALI CLE’s in-person courses or webcasts, or to check out on-demand CLE, click here.
There are people who believe that zombies will take over the world one day. Today, however, digital information rules the world. In the United States and many other industrialized nations, almost all non-verbal communications (as well as notes and transcriptions of verbal communications) are now stored, transmitted, and processed in a digital format. Data centers are the palace in which that digital information resides.
A data center is a highly specialized, secure facility designed to provide a safe, dependable, and controlled environment for the fast, reliable, and uninterrupted storage, processing, management, and transmission of digital data. Data from a source located outside of the data center is transmitted to and from the data center building through a fiber optic cable (a “fiber”),2 which is a specific type of conduit that transmits data in the form of light pulses over long distances. Within the data center, data may be stored and/or processed before being transmitted to other users, storers, or processors located at the same or another data center.
From the outside, a data center looks like a nondescript industrial building or an office building with darkened windows. On the inside, it is filled with an extensive array of computing and networking infrastructure, including cables, racks, servers, storage systems, networking equipment, power sources, and coolers. The often-chaotic arrangement of cables and wires within a data center masks the sophistication of the underlying network architecture and the complexity of the computing equipment housed therein.
Data centers are designed to accomplish three primary objectives.3 The first of these objectives is to minimize the time that it takes to store, transmit, and process the digital information to, from, and inside of the data center. Within the industry, this concept is referred to as “latency” and is measured by the time it takes the computing equipment to respond to a user’s request. The longer it takes for the data to be transmitted, the higher the latency. Even the slightest of delays, measured in small fractions of a second, may be long enough to render information valueless (e.g., to a stock trader who needs real-time information).4 Time delays also reduce productivity and efficiency because users must wait for the information to be uploaded before they can act upon it. Those readers who are old enough to recall accessing the internet through a telephone line can attest to the greater productivity that is achieved through today’s much faster ethernet and wireless connections.
The second principal objective of a data center is to enable digital data to be transmitted and processed seamlessly, without any kind of interruption. To achieve this continuity, many data centers employ backup arrangements for one or more of their critical systems, such as electrical power, network distribution, connectivity, data storage, fire suppression, and security. Data centers are evaluated by the number and strength of their backup systems, referred to within the data center industry as “redundancy.”5
The third principal objective of a data center is to provide a secure facility to ensure that the confidentiality and integrity of the data is maintained. This security is not only highly desirable but also mandatory in many instances. Numerous companies must comply with strict data protection and privacy regulations applicable to their respective industries (e.g., Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)).6
To ensure the security of a data center facility, a combination of physical and electronic measures is instituted to restrict access to the data center. Some data centers conduct extensive background checks and use biometric measurements for admittance. The data is also protected electronically through encryption, firewalls, monitoring, and other preventative security systems.7 In single-tenant facilities, if the information is particularly sensitive, a data center tenant may prohibit access by non-approved personnel even in an emergency. In the most restrictive data center leases, a property owner may not be allowed to access certain areas of the tenant’s space except in specified and limited types of emergencies.
Missed your chance to attend Current Developments in Employment Law 2024? Interested in learning more about artificial intelligence? Check out ALI CLE’s upcoming webcast, AI Issues for Employment Lawyers: Is the Sky Falling?, on August 28, 2024!
Data centers house massive amounts of computing equipment and computing infrastructure which operate continuously and require a constant (and cool) temperature to avoid overheating, which has the potential to disrupt computing operations. Besides latency and redundancy, a key data center measurement is its information technology (IT) load. The IT load measures the total electrical power demand of the IT equipment and systems within the data center, as distinguished from other electrical components within the data center, such as lights and cooling equipment.8 A data center developer needs to know the average expected IT load and the maximum IT load of the facility in order to design and construct the facility’s architecture and infrastructure (e.g., cooling elements and overall power) that would most efficiently and satisfactorily support the IT load.9
Measuring the IT load does not stop once the data center has been completed. A data center operator10 will continuously monitor the IT load to ensure that the cooling system and other infrastructure is providing the necessary support to the computing system. This continued monitoring helps ensure that the vast resources within the data center are allocated in a way that maximizes the efficiency and reliability of the data center.11
The electrical power required for the IT load and the supporting infrastructure make data centers more ravenous consumers of electricity than other real estate product types. For example, a typical office building will use an average of 13.6 watts of power per square foot,12 but a data center will rarely use fewer than 100 watts of power per square foot. Many data centers will use several hundred watts of power per square foot.13
Data centers are often categorized based upon the maximum level of power that they are able to provide. A data center deployment located in a shared facility may consume just a few kilowatts (KW) of power.14 In contrast, a large data center deployment may use tens or hundreds of megawatts (MW) of power.15 Regardless of the size of a data center, effective management of the electrical power is crucial to a data center’s successful operations.
CLICK HERE to read the full article, which was originally published in ALI CLE’s The Practical Real Estate Lawyer.
To find our more about ALI CLE’s in-person courses or webcasts, or to check out on-demand CLE, click here.
Dive in to an in-depth exploration of statutory and regulatory updates, compliance and enforcement strategies, water quality standards, and emerging issues in water pollution control.
This course, co-sponsored by the Environmental Law Institute, offers a unique opportunity to engage with the content that drives national water management policies and to network with key stakeholders in the field. You’ll gain valuable insights that can directly impact your practice and your clients.
Examine the latest legal developments and regulatory frameworks, and gain crucial insights and tools to navigate this complex field effectively.
Our faculty of top practitioners, public interest advocates, scientists, and senior EPA officials will discuss the latest developments in water law. Faculty will provide in-depth legal analyses, policy perspectives, and insights on the challenges environmental attorneys and related professionals in water law are facing today.
Get comprehensive information and real-world solutions to navigate these complexities as they cover topics such as:
Introduction and enforcement of the Clean Water Act
401 certification
WOTUS, Sackett v. EPA (Sackett II), and rule making
Environmental justice and the Clean Water Act
The Colorado River negotiation
Interactions between the CWA and other laws
The interrelationship between climate change and water resources
With so much going on in water law, you won’t want to miss this year’s program. Through incisive, balanced discussions from subject-matter experts, we’re covering everything from PFAS to 401 certification to climate change.
Be part of the conversation! Join us via live webcast for this in-depth course and learn about not only recent programmatic, litigation, and regulatory developments affecting the protection of the nation’s waterways and wetlands, but also the larger, emerging issues that will strongly influence water law and practice in the years to come.
Don’t miss this unique program! With a collegial approach and balanced discussions, you will come away informed and ready to handle the next clean water issue in your practice.
Join us for our upcoming program, Clean Water Act 2024: Law and Regulation, via live webcast on October 17-18, 2024! To learn more about this program and to register for the live webcast, click here.
