William B. Posner

William B. Posner who passed in 2024 at age 85, contributed to the pension field as a career federal civil servant who helped draft the landmark Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974 (“ERISA”) and who worked in leadership positions at two agencies during ERISA’s implementation. Bill was inducted in 2000 as a Charter Emeritus Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel (the “College”).

After earning his B.S. business degree with a major in accounting from the University of Maryland in College Park, MD in 1961, Bill became an Internal Revenue Agent in the income tax area at the IRS. Soon after, with the Vietnam War heating up, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force (1962-1966) and was stationed in Washington, DC in financial management.

In 1966, he returned to the IRS and became a Tax Law Specialist in the Miscellaneous and Special Provisions Tax Division’s pension trust branch. While an airman, he had been a night student at American University Washington College of Law in Washington, DC, earning his J.D. in 1967.

Bill would later recall that, in the mid-1960s, the IRS pension trust branch had only about 30 employees, and the tax law of qualified plans consisted of about five pages, with regulations of about 25 pages.

In 1971, when President Richard Nixon placed a freeze on most prices, wages, and rents as part of the Economic Stabilization Program, the IRS became responsible for administering and communicating the program to the public and investigating complaints. In 1972, Bill was assigned to work as a Stabilization Specialist for the Office of Congressional Affairs which assisted with constituent complaints.

In 1973, after demand for wage and price assistance waned, Bill returned to the pension trust branch, this time as a Tax Law Specialist and Project Leader, where he wrote revenue rulings and other official guidance. It was during this time that he had the opportunity to work on Capitol Hill in crafting legislation that would be called ERISA. He spent many long hours on the bill's tax provisions, working with actuary Ira Cohen and College Fellow William Lieber to help draft the intricate new landmark legislation. Everyone’s hard work paid off when ERISA passed the Senate, 85 to nothing, passed the House 407 to 2, and was signed into law at the White House by President Gerald Ford on Labor Day, 1974, with College Fellow Commissioner Alexander and Bill being among those attending.

Bill felt personally obligated to continue what he had helped to start, especially developing and drafting regulations to implement the new law’s provisions. He served as Assistant Branch Chief in the Employee Plans office of Employee Plans/Exempt Organizations. In 1979, he was chosen as Special Assistant for Employee Plan Matters to the Assistant Commissioner of Employee Plans/Exempt Organizations, where he coordinated the activities of the employee plans and the actuarial divisions.

While working at the IRS, Bill was an adjunct professor at George Washington University (1981-1985), where he taught employee benefits at the school’s graduate tax program with other experts involved in the development of ERISA: Ira Cohen, Bill Lieber, and Herb Chabot (who had been Deputy Chief of Staff of the U.S. Joint Committee on Taxation and became a Judge of the U.S. Tax Court in 1978).

In 1986, he became the Assistant Director of Employee Plans Technical and Actuarial Division under the IRS Assistant Commissioner of Employee Plans and Exempt Organizations, his office being responsible for the regulation of more than a million employee plan programs with a collective $2.5 trillion in assets. The division reviewed and approved applications for many employee plan matters, issued private letter rulings and technical advice memoranda, and reviewed master and prototype plan documents. Bill, together with his good friend College Fellow Martin (“Marty”) Slate who was Director of the IRS Employee Plans Technical and Actuarial Division at the time, made many presentations to practitioners at meetings of the American Bar Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and other industry groups.

After President William Clinton appointed Marty as Executive Director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (“PBGC”), Bill was asked by Marty for help in addressing some of the immediate challenges at the agency, including preparation for three Congressional hearings. To help his friend, Bill was participating in PBGC meetings at night while working at the IRS as Acting Employee Plans Director during the day. Bill recalled that after about a month of this, Marty casually asked him, “Wouldn’t it surprise everyone if you came over [to PBGC]?” And then, about a week later, Marty said, “Well, have you decided?” To which Bill replied, “Decided what?” Marty answered, “To be the deputy at PBGC.” Bill accepted Marty’s offer.

Bill left the IRS in 1993 to work at the PBGC as Marty’s Deputy Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer. In the News Release at the time of Bill’s appointment, Slate said that “With his vast knowledge of pension laws and programs, Bill will enrich our operations with his experience and understanding.” (PBGC 93-14, 1993 WL 210647.) Bill had corporate-wide responsibility for PBGC daily operations and oversaw and directed the gamut of its activities - insurance operations, public affairs, legal, management planning, and support services.

Bill’s work at the PBGC continued until his retirement in 1996 (about a year before Slate’s death), although Bill would provide some consulting services to the agency until about 1998.

In 1998, Bill took on a new challenge, this time on the international stage. As a consultant to the United States Agency for International Development, he embarked on a two-year project to help government in Hungary understand what was involved in setting up a Western-style pension system. Communicating and teaching the basic background of pension concepts through translators was challenging, he later said, given that their accountants did not use the U.S.- standard double entry system.

Looking back on his career, Bill was particularly proud of having conceived of the popular “missing participants” program at PBGC to help plans locate former employee-participants whose whereabouts had become unknown. Bill was quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying, “We wanted to be a kind of clearinghouse for locating lost participants…For us this is our bottom line, our mission: we want to get people their pensions.” (See “Agency Reunited People and Their Pensions,” Feb. 17, 1994.)

He was also quite proud of his work in developing the Voluntary Compliance Resolution (“VCR”) program (later part of the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System), which let tax-qualified retirement plans make voluntary corrections (i.e., prior to discovery on audit) so that operational mistakes would not cause the total loss of the plan’s tax advantages, which would have severely jeopardized the retirement savings of employees and their beneficiaries.

College Fellow Stu Sirkin who was a colleague and friend of Bill at both IRS and PBGC recalled Bill as a wonderful person. Other Fellows remarked on Bill’s thoughtfulness, careful consideration of other’s positions, and kindness. A legendary figure, Bill’s efforts in his long and productive career as a thoughtful and dedicated pension innovator and leader helped enhance the retirement security of millions of Americans.

Photo Source: Dignity Memorial https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/silver-spring-md/william-posner-11972372