PROFESSOR SAMANTHA PRINCE, RESEARCH ASSISTANT REBECCA HATTON, AND RECENT GRAD TIM AZIZKHAN FILE RECOMMENDATION WITH THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF TREASURY TO INCLUDE THE ELIMINATION OF 401(k) PLAN VESTING SCHEDULES IN THE IRS’S 2025-2026 PRIORITY GUIDANCE PLAN
May 2025 — Professor Samantha J. Prince, joined by a member of her current research team, Rebecca Hatton ’26, and recent graduate, Tim Azizkhan ’25, authored a public comment responding to the Internal Revenue Service’s invitation for recommendations on items to be included in its 2025-2026 Priority Guidance Plan.
Their public comment drew on Professor Prince’s scholarship in the employee benefits space to inform the IRS of the devastating effects that 401(k) vesting schedules have on the American worker. The comment advocates for the IRS to prioritize recommending to Congress that vesting schedules be eliminated from single-employer 401(k) plans. The comment highlights that vesting schedules benefit American employers at the expense of vulnerable populations who already face systemic barriers to building retirement wealth, while also stifling entrepreneurship. The comment further emphasizes that the number of plan participants affected by vesting schedules and the amount of forfeitures generated by them are growing rapidly. Finally, the comment presents how the elimination of vesting schedules would lessen administrative responsibilities for plan administrators and regulatory burdens for the IRS. All of this evidence was used to persuade the IRS to add this topic to their Priority Guidance Plan.
This comment builds off research illustrated in Professor Prince’s recent scholarship: “Megacompany Employee Churn Meets 401(k) Vesting Schedules: A Sabotage on Workers’ Retirement Wealth” published by Yale Law & Policy Review, “The Effects of Vesting Schedules — In Numbers co-written with Tim Azizkhan, Cassidy Prince, and Luke Gorman, published in Yale Law Journal Forum, and “Vesting Villainy: The Call to Ban 401(k) Vesting Schedules” forthcoming Univ. of Pennsylvania Journal of Business Law.
The comment was directly submitted to the Department of Treasury on May 27, 2025.
Professor Samantha Prince is an Associate Professor of Law and Director of Legal Analysis & Writing at Dickinson Law. She has a Master of Laws in Taxation from Georgetown University Law Center and was a partner in a regional law firm where she handled transactional matters that ranged from an initial public offering to regular representation of a publicly-traded company. A significant part of her practice was in employee benefits including retirement plan design and operation. Her expertise from practice has fueled her research enabling her to become an expert on 401(k) vesting schedules, employee benefits transparency, and gig work. In practice, most of her clients were small to medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs, including start-ups. Professor Prince brought her practice knowledge to the law school and established the Dickinson Law entrepreneurship program. She is an advisor for the Entrepreneurship Law Certificate that is available to students and is the founder and moderator of the Inside Entrepreneurship Law blog.