CareersEmployee Benefits & ERISA
Tax & Wealth Management
Practice Group Leader
Gary A. Zwick, Partner
Gary is a partner who has a general tax practice, with emphasis on tax planning for closely held and family businesses and their owners, and high-net-worth individuals. His focus encompasses not only income tax planning, but also estate planning, retirement plans and planning, business and individual taxation, Subchapters C & S, mergers and acquisitions, employee benefits and Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and tax court practice and controversy work.
216.928.2902
Our Employee Benefits & ERISA Difference
Walter Haverfield has broad experience in the area of employee benefit plans and ERISA. Our representation includes plan design, creation, amendments, termination, IRS and ERISA compliance, and inquiries and audits by the IRS and the Department of Labor.
To complement our full-service approach, Walter Haverfield’s established litigation team represents plans, corporations, and their insurers in ERISA cases. With a selective approach to litigating these types of claims, we focus on matters ranging from individual issues to issues presented as class actions.
Together, we represent:
- Major corporations
- Multi-employer pension, welfare, benefit plans
- Regional manufacturers
- Professional service corporations and their insurers
- Pension plans
- Profit-sharing plans
- Employee stock ownership (ESOP) plans
- Employee stock bonus plans and executive “top hat” plans
- 403(b) annuity plans, 457(b) and (f) plans
- Welfare (health/life/disability/vacation) plans
- Individual retirement accounts (IRAs and SEPs)
- “Rabbi” and secular trusts for a large variety of corporate, institutional, governmental, and individual clients
Employee Benefits & ERISA Team
Experience
- Consulting on qualified plan design, including defined benefit/defined contribution combinations
- Drafting and implementing individually designed qualified plans
- Handling qualified plan audits and interface with IRS to obtain qualification letters for the plans
- Designing and implementing VEBAs for larger employers and assisting small employers with employee benefit plans
- Designing, drafting, and implementing non-qualified deferred compensation, stock options, restricted stock plans
- Implementing IRA and other retirement strategies
- Advising clients on specific tax and ERISA compliance issues
- Providing due diligence to clients in mergers and acquisitions
- Managing audits of qualified plans that raise numerous complex issues
- Assisting municipalities with issues that surrounded their Section 457 plans’ compliance with the current rules
- Preparing and submitting numerous VCP filings involving many complex and novel errors, and successfully negotiated compliance statements with the IRS
- Assisting clients in implementing the corrections required under compliance statements issued by the IRS
- Representing a tax-exempt entity in the spin-off of its employees’ pension benefits from a multiple employer pension plan to a single employer plan
- Advising clients with respect to plan terminations, and, with respect to defined benefit plans, annuity purchases
- Revising corporate-sponsored prototype plans to meet new federal legislation requirements
- Defending claims of breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, self-dealing, denial of benefits, and benefits discrimination
- Representation of client on release of funds from a pension fund where trustee refused to acknowledge client as the beneficiary of the funds at issue
