It's clear that the IRA system was created to encourage saving for retirement through tax deferral.

It was not intended for billionaires, because for them it serves no purpose in encouraging them to save for retirement. (Financial security in retirement is not something billionaires worry about.)

The idea that there is no way the law could exclude this sort of benefit while not hurting the middle class is absurd. There are any number of ways to do it: for example, any plan with more than $10 million in capital gains could have gains above that amount lose their tax-exempt status.

>It's clear that the IRA system was created to encourage saving for retirement through tax deferral.

It is not clear to me that IRAs were created for this reason. As far as I can tell, they seem to exist only to provide plausible deniability (and poorly at that) for 401ks giving an advantage to big businesses that can afford to implement them (pre Vanguard/cheap passive investing days) over smaller businesses that could not afford to implement 401ks.

Otherwise, I see no reason why people who work for employers that can afford to offer 401ks should have a leg up in tax advantaged retirement savings over people who do not and have to rely on IRAs (which have drastically lower contribution limits).

>It was not intended for billionaires,

It would have been simple to write in a limit for maximum amount of tax free gains in Roths.

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”

I think there are about 4 billion billionaire-specific things Thiel is getting out of this arrangement that aren't accessible to me (or, I suspect, to you).

> If the law is changed it will not only limit Peter Thiel from doing this but also you and me.

That obviously not necessarily true. One can imagine a change in law that limits tax sheltering of this type for any individual to say, 10mm. A tiny fraction of the population would be affected.

> That obviously not necessarily true. One can imagine a change in law that limits tax sheltering of this type for any individual to say, 10mm. A tiny fraction of the population would be affected.

Or limit the types of assets that can be held in an IRA to those that are publicly traded and can be bought on the open market. It seems like an important part of this scheme was Thiel basically got to set the price of some shares he sold himself, because they weren't publicly traded at the time.

Then you are limiting what people can do with their money 2 inflating stock prices of giant companies. What if I want to invest in a friend's business or buy a rental property. Are you saying it should be illegal for me to do that with my IRA?

> Then you are limiting what people can do with their money 2 inflating stock prices of giant companies.

So? It's what 99.999% of them do anyway.

> What if I want to invest in a friend's business or buy a rental property. Are you saying it should be illegal for me to do that with my IRA?

Yes.

No. IRA is funded with your money, so you should be able to do with it what you please. Next you'll be telling people they can only buy ETFs because stocks are too risky.

You can do what you please with your money and one of your choices is to put it in an ira or not. If you've decided to put it in a specially tax advantaged shelter defined by the government then you follow the rules they define for that status, if you don't want to then you don't put it in an ira

> No. IRA is funded with your money, so you should be able to do with it what you please.

No. You can't even do what you please with money that's not in an IRA. And I mean, you already have to accept other restrictions to enjoy the tax advantages of an IRA, so what's so bad about adding another small one to solve this problem?

If you can legally invest in an asset in a taxable account, you should be able to invest in the same when its an IRA. Anyone can take advantage of this. Why do you want to restrict the way people invest their retirement funds?

All money is yours legally. The gov can tax it.

Some things are are illegal to do with money and assets, but that doesn't mean that everything belongs to the government

The gains over doing the same at a taxable accounts are not your money, but public funds (the taxes not paid on those).

With taxable accounts, it is legally your assets, gains or not. You pay taxes when you sell. Just like with a traditional, non-Roth IRA: you pay taxes when you withdraw. The IRS makes the rules.

The IRS doesn't make the rules, but enforces them.

Unlike a somewhat popular opinion on this website, the law isn't an algorithm, but a codification of societal norms, like that we all share the expanses of living in civilized society.

Yes, the TRANSFER of assets happens at time of sell or withdrawal, but the share taxes was painted such when we (the people, through legislation. Not the IRS!) decided that such share should be dedicated to society.

This isn't about letter of the law, and never was: it's being an asshole.

That doesn't even make sense. The "share" is not known until the assets are sold or withdrawn, and also subject to change based on whatever tax law happens to be at the time. If I hold a stock long term, instead of day trading and accruing short term gains and associated taxes, am I being an asshole?

Better yet, they can only invest in blue-chip companies

It always amazes me how quick people are to needlessly take away freedoms and fuck others over as a knee-jerk reaction.

Putting restrictions on others should have careful thought and clear rationale.

> It always amazes me how quick people are to needlessly take away freedoms and fuck others over as a knee-jerk reaction.

What freedoms? We're talking about tax advantaged investment accounts intended for a very specific public purpose, which are already restricted in many ways because of that.

If you don't like restrictions, we could also solve this problem by abolishing IRAs then. Does that sound better to you?

You are proposing adding new restrictions on what people can do with their money. That is taking away their freedom. It is worse because you propose it as a solution to problem that doesn't even exist.

Your being very optimistic here and changes will make the existing v poor US pensions system worse.

edge cases make bad law eg using the small number of social security cheats to reduce entitlements to all or the tiny tiny number of cases of elector fraud to disenfranchise the poor and BAME.

Dunblane and the Dangerous dogs act in the UK are related.

This is the sort of thing that fringe "hobbyist" activists do assuming they aren't paid agent provocateur's

> Your being very optimistic here

I'm not being optimistic or pessimistic, just pointing out a logical fallacy.

There is actually something millionaire specific about what Thiel did. He was an accredited investor that was able to buy private shares that the general public cannot buy.

If IRAs were only allowed to purchase publicly-listed stock, this wouldn't have happened.

Which also gives the accredited investors another advantage: with less capital available, the valuations are inherently depressed.

That's the point. It should limit temporarily embarrassed billionaires like you and me from doing this if we regain our riches.