So you’ve created a Roth IRA because: “My accountant suggested I convert to a Roth IRA.” I get it. Sure it could make sense long-term if the growth of the portfolio is good, and if the law remains the same. That’s too many ifs for me. To feel more comfortable I’d prefer you didn’t have to deal with the issue all together as I pointed out here:
Chris [Edwards] is Cato Institute’s Director of Tax Policy Studies and editor of DownsizingGovernment.org. If you’re looking for a way to help advance the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace, you’ve found it in the Cato Institute.
Cato’s ideas are supported by facts and numbers (shocking, right?) and they’re located in the belly of the beast of Washington D.C., where good ideas normally die from complication.
You and I know retirement accounts are too complicated. Thanks to rules made by out of touch politicians, too much time is used thinking about rules rather than investments.
Take the Roth IRA for example. Every time I talk about the rules with investors I feel like I’m going to hit a trip wire. As if saving money weren’t hard enough.
Chris and my favorite “tell it the way it was” author Amity Shlaes (The Forgotten Man, Coolidge) explain in the Wall Street Journal that a retirement savings idea we could use is already working in Canada. It’s called the Tax-Free Savings account. Here it would be called The Universal Savings account and implementation wouldn’t need a revamping of the tax system.
“Congress can simply expand eligibility and lift limits on the Roth IRA format,” write Edwards and Schlaes. This is not rocket science. But Washington has made it seem like it is. Thanks to freedom fighters like Amity Shlaes, Chris Edwards and others found at Cato, you and I will never be forgotten.
