President Biden signed the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) 2.0 Act into law in late 2022, but much of the wide-reaching retirement legislation is being phased in over time. There are some significant changes in 2024 and 2025 that may help nonprofit employers recruit and retain employees. This article presents what organizations need to know. A brief sidebar looks at how SECURE 2.0 boosts the advantages of qualified charitable distributions (QCDs), possibly leading to larger gifts for nonprofits.

The tax code allows an individual to claim a deduction for business debts that have become worthless. But qualifying for the deduction may be more complicated than one would think. In a recent case, the IRS denied more than $17 million in bad debt deductions on the grounds that the advances in question represented equity rather than debt, hitting the taxpayer with millions of dollars in taxes and penalties. This article recounts the U.S. Tax Court case Allen v. Commissioner. Allen v. Commissioner (T.C. Memo 2023-86).