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This is a flat-out abuse of the intent of the IRA program …
Of course … the IRA program has also (along with 401ks) been serving another less than noble purpose for some time - draw the focus away from company “pension plans”
Remember when corporations would have pension plans? just think of the number of companies that have retreated from “company pension plans” to sponsoring 401k programs (which upon departure can be rolled to an IRA) … all of which has been part of a morphing of “retirement planning” into less prominent presence in employee benefits … much like retiree health care has - by most companies - gotten punted to medicare.
Among the companies lobbying on the proposal is San Francisco-based Forge Global, which runs a marketplace for shares of private companies and also has a division that administers IRA plans.
Well, of course they’re upset. I mean, let’s say that Thiel has that entire $5B in an index fund. Average fees for one of those run about 0.06 percent. Let’s say they’re giving him a huge discount and go to 0.01 percent. Even under those fairly extreme assumptions, that would be half a million dollars a year to the IRA fund administrator for doing basically nothing.
(In reality, of course, there’s no way it’s just an index fund – the investment firms that cater to the super-rich are all about their special levels of service and individual attention – and there’s no way the fees are that low. So they’re raking in multi millions just from that one account.)
IRAs (Individual Retirement Account - pre-tax deposits) & specifically - Roth IRAs (Individual Retirement Account - after-tax deposits- with a Tax-Free status for earnings and withdrawals)
were never intended to be a vehicle for somebody like this guy to go and insert a highly-under-valued asset ($2,000) - and have it bloom into $5,000,000,000…
This was a loophole in the structure - and there is no defense / no excuse for preserving this loophole - congrats for finding it … Peter … but this was never the intention and it should be shut down …
B-b-but – Jebus! But it’s in the Constitution! But TFG will be reinstated! But states’ rights! Actually, both parties suck at the financial services spigot. Big talk about doing something about this. Talk alone doesn’t always reduce campaign donations. I doubt this loophole will change.
A lot of money those 2% of IRA investors have squirreled away.
Would anyone like to compare and contrast the fight to keep these funds tax free, while on the other hand Manchin is complaining about work requirements for a child tax credit?
Romney also has a giant IRA using the same method. This proposal should rake in $1B in the first year from Thiel. Couldn’t happen to a nicer vampiric ahole.
I’m pissed about the changes as they’ll stop using the backdoor Roth IRA conversion for employed people, which will chop $17k out of how much I can invest. If they just keep the total employee/employer cap as a combined limit instead of the employee being separate and lower, I could live with that but I get whacked with the way it’s currently written.
Goddamn, the inability of these motherfuckers to relent even on capping IRA’s at twenty million fucking dollars, maximal resistance to ever paying taxes on their swollen dragon hoards and refusal to grasp that this is the exact kind of thing that ends up with people like them up against bullet-pocked walls, is maddening.
Increasingly coming around to the view that the first duty of government is to save the rich from the consequences of their own limitless rapacity and, by that standard, as with so many others, we are failing.
Remember when corporations would have pension plans? just think of the number of companies that have retreated from “company pension plans” to sponsoring 401k programs (which upon departure can be rolled to an IRA)
Be glad that ‘pension plans’ are going out of style. How many companies had pension plans that disappeared, went broke, or ‘reorganized’ so that your 30 years of service became a measley $250 per month? Then there are the companies using the pension plan to supplement the corporate short fall. Or the fortune 500s that washed out all their older workers before collection of pensions kicks in.
Until and unless pension plans are transferable to the worker when they leave service for other jobs, pension plans are very risky for the worker. There are thousands of corporations that didn’t make it to retirement age for the worker.
Fidelity has 4 index funds with a 0% expense ratio. My 401k is in a Vanguard index with a 0.02% expense ratio. If anyone is in a main-stream index fund (S&P, NASDAQ, Large Cap, etc) with a 0.06% expense ratio they are getting screwed with their pants on.
Yes - that is also a valid issue …
there have been too many ways that things that the average worker thought they were incrementally earning - was subsequently siphoned away … and framed as “market conditions” … the dynamics of “free enterprise”