Right now, your company could have a life insurance policy on you that you know nothing about. When you die -- perhaps years after you leave your employer -- the tax-free proceeds from this policy wouldn't go to your family. The money would go to the company.
Whats more, the company might use this policy to pay for retirement benefits and other perks not for you or your fellow workers, but for your company's top executives.
Sound outrageous? Such corporate-owned life insurance is also big business:
Whats more, the company might use this policy to pay for retirement benefits and other perks not for you or your fellow workers, but for your company's top executives.
Sound outrageous? Such corporate-owned life insurance is also big business:
- Companies pay a whopping $8 billion in premiums each year for such coverage, according to the American Council of Life Insurers, a trade group.
- The policies make up more than 20% of the all the life insurance sold each year.
- Companies expect to reap more than $9 billion in tax breaks from these policies over the next five years. The policies are treated as whole life policies. So, companies can borrow against the policies (though the IRS won't let them write off the interest). And the death benefits are tax-free.
These policies, nicknamed dead janitors or dead peasants insurance, soared in popularity after many states cleared the way for them in the 1980s. Congress recently tried to crack down on the practice, to the howls of the insurance industry -- which earlier this year managed to derail reforms.
So, who are the "Dead-Peasants"? We are! It's time we fight to change legislation and regulate such corporate practices like this one! There is a group of elitists that are working together to keep the work-force oppressed and weak. We are not weak. We are 99%! Strength is in numbers!
