Transcript:
Easan Arulanantham:
And so the IRS, do you think there would be ever a curveball where they tax Roth, um, you know, you can look up, that will happen to Social Security with what they call a provisional income now, and, you know, with that double taxation?
Tom Vaughan:
Yes, it’s kind of a common comment I’ve seen, you know, we saw it on one of our videos, and we’ve seen it, I’ve seen it other places also. So the thought is, hey, I’m going to put money into this Roth IRA. And you can do so you know, through a conversion or through actual money that you put in if you qualify, and it’s going to grow tax free. And, you know, could they change the law, so it actually doesn’t grow tax free, and I should have made you just put it in a regular IRA or regular 401k. And they often cite the double taxation situation on Social Security. So what happened was, you know, Social Security originally when it came out was completely tax free. And then they set up a scenario where, if you’re over a certain level of income, they’re going to attack. So security, and Social Security sort of as a tax write, it comes off your paycheck, it goes out to people that are currently getting Social Security. And so that’s what looks like double taxation. But I don’t know if it’s a great correlation. I mean, you’re talking about a government kind of pension program that is designed for a low income. I mean, if you look at Social Security very closely, it is designed to help somebody really doesn’t have much else. And if you have eat, it’s not just the taxation, you know, for higher income earners. It is also the way the calculation is done for those people that put in very little, they get a lot more back the rate on a ratio basis than those people that put in a lot.
So, versus versus a Roth IRA or a Roth 401k. That’s literally your asset. I’ve never seen anything like that where they’ve changed the rules on that. And I do think, you know, let’s say I have $100,000, that I’ve converted from an IRA to a Roth IRA, I pay my tax when I do that conversion, maybe they could change it at some point in time to see the growth on that would be taxable when it was supposed to be tax free. But taxing me again on that $100,000, I don’t see it, honestly, I think I think that you know, the concept, though, of having an even or some form of distribution between taxable assets, tax deferred assets, like an IRA, and tax free assets, would, the one big advantage of that is that as they change tax laws, they increase capital gains, they lower capital gains, they make Ross taxable, they don’t make Ross taxable, they change the RMDs on the IRAs, for example, you diversify your risk amongst tax law changes by having money in all three of those buckets, which is what we advocate. As far as that goes, I probably want to have more in a tax free bucket than a tax deferred bucket if I had a choice. But having something in all three kind of protects you from those kinds of changes. So anyway, that that would be my thought process on that. I wouldn’t worry too much personally about the taxation issue. But, you know, keep it diversified, and we can try to figure out what to do.
Easan Arulanantham:
Do you feel it’s like more likely that they’ll cap the amount of money you can have in a Roth and just like, say anything above this number, is you have to take it out, and then you start paying taxes on that those gains, or whenever those actually increase from investments? Is that like a better way to tax it? So like, you still maintain like, tax free Roth, but you know, you limit the I guess, the billionaires or someone from abusing the system?
Tom Vaughan:
Yeah. Well, that’s, that’s what’s in the bill bit better back better program right now, that just passed the House today is that if you have more than $10 million in a Roth IRA, you have to distribute that it’s not taxable. But so let’s say you have 11 million, you got to take a million out and put it in your taxable account, and then the growth thereafter, and that million would be taxable. And then the next year grows to 12 million, Okay, gotta take out 2 million that year, but it’s not taxable. So that’s what they’ve got in there. Right now. I don’t have any clients that have more than $10 million in a Roth IRA, for example, in this particular case, and I’d be a little bit cautious even talking about this, because that was passed in the House and it still has to go through the Senate. We’ll talk much more concretely when this thing’s at all passed. And we know we’re dealing with but that’s, but that’s what they’re trying to do right now is making it so that somebody who has a giant Roth won’t be able to keep it growing tax free, till it’s a billion dollars or whatever. And there’s, you know, a story of a $5 billion Roth out there that you know, somebody put their phone Your stock in a Roth IRA and it obviously grew so that that situation would be capped at $10 million. I think that’s fine. I you know, it was designed for kind of that, you know, average Joe, to be able to have some way to have a good retirement and save tax free. I think the Roth thing would be really fine if that’s what they ended up doing personally. But anyway, so there, there’s a whole bunch of pieces that are going to affect the Roth game. We’ll talk about them more when it passes because it’s changed, I don’t know three or four times already just in this process, so still has to go through the Senate.