529 industry lobbying group submits comments to Treasury

The College Savings Foundation, a 501(c)(6) organization comprised of members from the financial services industry, has submitted a letter to the U.S. Treasury Department commenting on proposed changes to Section 529. Responding to Treasury concerns about the potential abuse of 529 plans, the CSF has outlined the following positions:

- it would not oppose treating a contribution to a 529 account received from a non-account owner as first a gift from the non-owner to the owner of the 529 account.

- it would support a requirement that changes of ownership be limited to death or other changes resulting from involvement in the judicial system.

- it would support a change limiting changes of beneficiaries to family members, and eliminating the ability of an account owner to engage in changes of beneficiary to combine multiple accounts into an account or accounts with the same beneficiary in an abusive manner.

- it believes that changes of beneficiary should result in gift taxes, if any, to the account owner, not the beneficiary.

- it opposes changes that would shift control of accounts to beneficiaries, impose additional excise taxes on nonqualified distributions, or impose a beneficiary age 35 requirement.
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