Alston & Bird Tax Blog

Pennsylvania

Supreme Court–Appointed Special Master Applies Place-of-Purchase Jurisdictional Rule to MoneyGram’s Unclaimed “Official Checks”

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Our Unclaimed Property Team reviews the report of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Special Master parsing the definitions of “money orders” and “similar instruments” and how those words decide if certain unclaimed property falls under federal common law or the federal Disposition of Abandoned Money Orders and Traveler’s Checks Act. The report is a master class in statutory constructionThe Special Master analyzed MoneyGram “official checks” to determine those meet three statutory conditions for an instrument to constitute a “similar instrument”This analytical framework may have broader [...]Read more

Pennsylvania Amends IRA Provisions of Unclaimed Property Law and Adds Due Diligence Requirements

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The Pennsylvania General Assembly passed HB 1605 on July 13, 2016, and it was approved by Governor Tom Wolf on the same day.  Contained within this omnibus finance bill are two sections that significantly amend Pennsylvania's unclaimed property law: section 4, which revises the dormancy standard applicable to IRAs; and section 5, which imposes formal due diligence requirements on holders.

In particular, section 4 of HB 1605 revises section 1301.8 of Pennsylvania's unclaimed property law to provide that the dormancy period for a retirement account is triggered when the holder “has lost [...]Read more

State-vs.-State Unclaimed Property Dispute May be Heading to the Supreme Court

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In March, we issued an advisory highlighting a lawsuit filed by the Pennsylvania Treasury Department against the State of Delaware in federal district court seeking to recover uncashed official checks escheated to Delaware by MoneyGram.  (http://www.alston.com/advisories/money-gram/).  Essentially, the dispute centers upon whether MoneyGram's official checks were subject to the Federal Disposition Act, in which case they would have been reportable to the state(s) in which they were issued rather than Delaware, the state of MoneyGram's domicile.  In our prior advisory, we pointed out that [...]Read more