William M. Lieber

William M. Lieber, who died in 1997 at age 58, was instrumental in drafting the Employee Retirement Income Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) and other pension legislation. Known by some as the “expert’s expert” who generously shared his first-hand knowledge with others, Bill was inducted in 2000 as an In Memoriam Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel (the “College”).

Bill graduated with a B.S. in accountancy in 1961 from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Commerce and Business Administration (later renamed the Gies College of Business) and earned a J.D. in 1964 from the University of Chicago Law School. While attending law school, Bill completed the Certified Public Accountant (“CPA”) examination, and was licensed as a CPA by the State of Illinois in 1966, after completing two years of employment as a tax accountant in Chicago with the firm of Price Waterhouse & Co. (name changed in 1998 to PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited).

In 1966, Bill started at the IRS Office of Chief Counsel in the Legislation and Regulations Division as an attorney advisor. In 1970, he became Assistant Chief of Branch No. 4 (the Division was then under the Associate Chief Counsel (Technical)) and in 1971, became Chief of Branch No. 4. In 1972, Bill worked with equally-young representatives from the IRS Pension Rulings and Pension Actuarial Branches (actuary Ira Cohen and College Fellow William B. Posner) to support Congressional consideration of what was ultimately enacted as ERISA. He headed the IRS ERISA drafting team.

Leaving Bill Posner and Ira Cohen to support the development of a regulatory and administrative scheme to operationalize the tax provisions of ERISA, Bill Lieber then moved to the U.S. House Joint Committee on Taxation, where he served as Pension Tax Counsel for many years (circa 1976-1989), leaving his stamp on a vast array of pension legislation, including the Multiemployer Pension Plan Amendment Act of 1980, the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, the Deficit Reduction Act of 1984, and the Retirement Equity Act of 1984.

After leaving government service at age 50 in 1989, he enjoyed a solo consulting practice in Columbia, MD for several years. Tirelessly working to promote the welfare of pension participants, close tax loopholes, and educate the employee benefits community, Bill was widely known and appreciated as an “expert’s expert” willing to share his impressive knowledge and extensive experience in government in pension matters.

He authored an impressive five-volume treatise more than 4,000 pages, entitled “Lieber on Pensions” (Aspen Law & Business 1991 (formerly published by Prentice Hall Law & Business which later became Wolters Kluwer). His care and attention in drafting was not limited to legal details. One College Fellow recalled Bill talking about taking great pains to make his book gender-neutral. This was during the very earliest days of that being a concept. He also was an author of Prentice Hall’s “Pension Answer Book.”

He was an in demand speaker as he explained new employee benefits laws at numerous American Law Institute-American Bar Association seminars for lawyers, CPAs, actuaries, and administrators. He also taught deferred compensation as a Professorial Lecturer in Law at George Washington University’s National Law Center in Washington, DC. Bill also served personally as a mentor for numerous pension attorneys. Professional colleagues were delighted that he made himself easily available for questions via email.

In addition to sharing his in-depth knowledge of the laws, part of Bill’s success as a speaker and colleague was that he would share entertaining and informative stories about his drafting team and the input of contributors from various areas of government who all helped draft the law. Work for the IRS ERISA drafting team involved long days spent exploring policy and anticipating legal, technical, and administrative problems affecting tax provisions. He, Cohen, and Posner also commuted together and jump-started and extended the days by using the time in the carpool to discuss, create, and refine ideas for new tax provisions in response to the day’s assigned drafting challenges and feedback from the Hill. Once at the office, a draft was prepared, run past others for reaction and input, and the discussions continued on the ride home.

In giving talks to practitioners about the law’s development in later years, Bill sometimes took a humorous approach regarding some of the complexity in the law. College Fellow Roberta Casper Watson remembered Bill saying when the group were working on Internal Revenue Code section 415 dealing with contribution and benefit limits for plans, they were stuck at a train crossing, and thus, had time to make it long and detailed. In fact, one of the most contentious (and complex) issues on the Senate floor involved pension contribution limits for defined contribution plans and benefit limits for defined benefit plans, and a combined limit for employees who participated in both types of plans. Bill was proud of the clever solutions found for these difficult issues which, despite hard work to simplify provisions as much as possible, were sometimes long and detailed.

When drafting provisions for new individual retirement accounts (“IRAs”) in ERISA section 408, he worked with existing structures and systems as the most efficient design source given the time pressures imposed by Congress. In naming the new individual retirement design which would become common across the country, the team of drafters considered various names, but ultimately chose the name with the acronym that also happened to be the name of Ira Cohen, one of the drafting team. See https://books.google.com/books?id=nAMEAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA124&dq=
bill%20lieber&pg=PA124#v=onepage&q=bill%20lieber&f=false

Bill’s impressive skill, effort, accessibility, and diligence led him to a significant role in helping to shape the law and a remarkable record of contributions to employee benefits law scholarship that made him an invaluable treasure.

For more of Bill’s reflections about how ERISA was drafted, see “An IRS Insider’s View of ERISA” by William Lieber, 65 Tax Notes 751-753, Nov. 7, 1994.

Photo Source: records.myheritagelibraryedition.com