OUR devious tax laws give rise to such venerable questions as, Whose money is it? This point was raised acutely by the court in Chicago that ruled that United Airlines could legitimately, when turning to the protections of the bankruptcy law, suspend the payment of pensions accrued. One can sympathize with the outrage felt by company employees who have lived on the assumption that pension funds were accumulating to which one day they would have access.
The company’s position is what one might expect. If the purpose of the bankruptcy law is to suspend the obligations of a company in bankruptcy, then one would expect that “all obligations” would include pension payments. The position of the unions is that the sequestration of those funds was sacrosanct.
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