Andrew Williams advises those employers which maintain a 401(k) or any other retirement plan to take a look at their internal practices and administrative procedures. In-house fiduciaries are charged under ERISA with a duty to “monitor” the activities of each plan service provider.  This entails the ongoing review of the quality, sufficiency and cost of services provided to the plan and its participants. No matter how comfortable an employer’s relationship with its plan service providers may be, it is the responsibility of the employer/plan administrator and retirement plan committee members to assure that plan participants are receiving necessary and appropriate services at a cost that is reasonable.

Dr. Stephen Thaler created an artificial intelligence program called the ‘Creativity Machine’ which produced a work named ‘A Recent Entrance to Paradise.’ Dr. Thaler tried to register the work with the United States Copyright Office. The Copyright Office rejected the application because the art did not meet the requirement of being created by a human. Dr. Thaler filed suit which eventually made its way to the US Supreme Court. Read more to see what the current fate of non-human creativity and the Supreme Court did with Dr. Thaler’s case.

A tax attorney was misled by the IRS when initiating a rollover for his IRA. Tax court ruled in favor of the IRS which resulted in penalties for the tax attorney. Andrew Williams invites readers to partake in this cautionary tale and explores other methods to protect your assets.

In Brief: January 1 marks the day that some copyrighted works become public domain and may be used for free. This year works created before 1930 are now up for free use. Read more to see what has recently become available.