Court Blows Up Corporate Welfare Benefit Plan.

This case involved multiple cases that were consolidated involving the "Sterling Benefit Plan."  The plan was a purported welfare benefit plan consisting of separate plan that each employer that participated in the plan tailored to its employees concerning the payment of death, medical, and disability benefits.  An employee would designate a beneficiary that the plan would pay benefits to, and the death benefit was the face amount of the life insurance policy that the plan bought on the employee's life.  The premiums were paid by the employer via plan payments and the policy typically had a cash value that increased on an annual basis.  Non-death benefits were limited to cash value, and an employer could end plan participation and trigger full vesting of an employee in the life insurance policy.  An employee could take the policy in satisfaction of a post-death retirement death benefit upon retirement.  The case involved three corporations that were each wholly owned by a sole person, and an S corporation owned by three other persons.  The court determined that the plan was a split-dollar arrangement under which the shareholder/employees with insurance on their lives had compensation income in accordance with Treas. Reg. Sec. 1.61-22.  In addition, the payments to the plan were not deductible and the policies did not qualify as group term policies because they were individually underwritten.  The plan was a listed transaction, and the 30 percent accuracy-related penalty applied.  Our Country Home Enterprises, Inc., et al. v. Comr., 145 T.C. 1 (2015).