Len Burman is a tax expert and former director of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. In 2006, analyzing the repeal of the $100,000 income limit on Roth conversions, he called it an "especially insidious" fiscal gimmick. Roth accounts, he wrote, are a downstream disaster: "The revenue losses"are exceedingly poorly timed. They reduce federal revenues at the same time that the baby boomers are aging".[The accounts] will place a large and growing portion of the tax base off limits"just when our children and grandchildren will most need tax revenues."
Roths were a flimflam from the beginning, "a conscious, contemptible manipulation of the budget rules;" so said John Buckley, former chief Democratic counsel to the Committee on Ways and Means. The accounts belong in America's past, not its future: the Treasury would be billions better off without them.
Let's use our smarts and our hearts. Let's make retirement accounts the last, golden part of the American Dream.
P.S. In April 2012, the House Committee on Ways and Means held a hearing on tax reform and tax-advantaged retirement accounts. I filed a statement at the hearing recommending that required minimum distributions begin at age 65 instead of 70 1/2. The statement explains how distributions work and why they should begin earlier: waysandmeans.house.gov/...
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