House Democrats' plan would prohibit individual retirement accounts from holding private equity, hed

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hedge funds

A tax package unveiled by House Democrats would forbid individual retirement accounts from holding certain private investments typically reserved for the wealthy.

While proponents think the proposal would raise investor protection and reduce the use of an IRA as a tax shelter for the rich, critics think it could lead to a big financial hit for some investors — even some everyday savers.

The House legislation, unveiled last week, would prevent IRAs from holding investments offered to "accredited investors."

This status is for investors who hit certain benchmarks, like $200,000 of annual income or a $1 million net worth (excluding a home). It lets them invest in securities like private equity, hedge funds and venture capital; they aren't publicly traded, unlike mutual funds and stocks available on a public stock exchange.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/house-democrats-plan-would-prohibit-individual-retirement-accounts-from-holding-private-equity-hedge-funds/ar-AAODU4s

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1. Lord of the Roths: How Tech Mogul Peter Thiel Turned a Retirement Account for the Middle Class Into

a $5 Billion Tax-Free Piggy Bank

Roth IRAs were intended to help average working Americans save, but IRS records show Thiel and other ultrawealthy investors have used them to amass vast untaxed fortunes.

https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tech-mogul-peter-thiel-turned-a-retirement-account-for-the-middle-class-into-a-5-billion-dollar-tax-free-piggy-bank


Billionaire Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, has publicly condemned “confiscatory taxes.” He’s been a major funder of one of the most prominent anti-tax political action committees in the country. And he’s bankrolled a group that promotes building floating nations that would impose no compulsory income taxes.

But Thiel doesn’t need a man-made island to avoid paying taxes. He has something just as effective: a Roth individual retirement account. Over the last 20 years, Thiel has quietly turned his Roth IRA — a humdrum retirement vehicle intended to spur Americans to save for their golden years — into a gargantuan tax-exempt piggy bank, confidential Internal Revenue Service data shows. Using stock deals unavailable to most people, Thiel has taken a retirement account worth less than $2,000 in 1999 and spun it into a $5 billion windfall.

To put that into perspective, here’s how much the average Roth was worth at the end of 2018: $39,108. And here’s how much $5 billion is: If every one of the 2.3 million people in Houston, Texas, were to deposit $2,000 into a bank today, those accounts still wouldn’t equal what Thiel has in his Roth IRA. What’s more, as long as Thiel waits to withdraw his money until April 2027, when he is six months shy of his 60th birthday, he will never have to pay a penny of tax on those billions.

ProPublica has obtained a trove of IRS tax return data on thousands of the country’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. This data provides, for the first time, an inside look at the financial lives of the richest Americans, those whose stratospheric fortunes put them among history’s wealthiest individuals. What this secret information reveals is that while most Americans are dutifully paying taxes — chipping in their part to fund the military, highways and safety-net programs — the country’s richest citizens are finding ways to sidestep the tax system. One of the most surprising of these techniques involves the Roth IRA, which limits most people to contributing just $6,000 each year.

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