Did Stretch IRAs Deserve to Die?

Individual Retirement Accounts began as simple way to put aside a few bucks. With the passing years, limits on annual IRA contributions increased and top income earners started moving megabucks into rollover IRAs.  Estate planners took notice.

Assets remaining in IRAs and 401(k)s at the owner’s death could be passed to a named beneficiary, and not necessarily in a lump sum. Distributions could be stretched over the beneficiary’s lifetime. Planners saw the potential for “inheritances" that offered many years of tax-deferred investment growth. Potentially, owners of seven-figure rollover IRAs could leave the grandkids a growing income for life.

Just one problem: Bright, imaginative grandchildren weren’t going to let a stretch IRA dribble out payments decade after decade. They would empty the account and use the after-tax proceeds to buy a beach house, start a business, back a Broadway musical. or who knows what.

The challenge for estate planners: Create trust provisions that deterred or prevented such impulsiveness, while also complying with IRA regulations. They rose to the challenge. Now the SECURE act has made their ingenuity almost useless. Except for spouses and with certain other limited exceptions, the SECURE act eliminates stretch IRAs. Most beneficiaries are now required to empty their IRAs within ten years.

The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal was not amused by the stretch IRA's demise, accusing Congress of playing a dirty trick on “the 90-year-old banking on this strategy." But the WSJ conceded, "there’s a reasonable case that IRAs weren’t meant to outlive their owners by decades.”

Michelle Singletary in The Washington Post agrees. IRAs weren’t intended to be estate planning vehicles.

There is nothing wrong with trying to minimize your taxes or the tax bill for your heirs. That’s a smart money move. However, IRAs and 401(k)s weren’t meant to be used as a way to transfer wealth. They were designed to encourage people to save by giving plan participants and/or account holders — not their children or children’s children — a tax break. The loophole created by the law that has allowed beneficiaries to stretch out their tax burden was a bonus, not an entitlement that should never be touched.

I’m with Singletary. The death of the stretch IRA is timely.

The Unbearable Complexity of Almost Everything Financial

"The complexity of our financial lives is so extreme that we must painstakingly manage each and every aspect of it,"laments Ron Lieber in The New York Times. He cites Social Security.

In my parents' time, the breadwinner claimed Social Security when he retired, his stay-at-home wife claimed her spousal benefit, and that was that. Today? Couples need to study a book or two and seek expert counsel or risk leaving money on the table.

If Social Security has become too complicated, "tax-favored" retirement plans have become a national disgrace. We have pensions (often underfunded) and 401(k)s (often overpriced). We have IRAs and spousal IRAs and self-directed IRAs and Roth IRAs and SEP IRAs and rollover IRAs and stretch IRAs and …..

Yet everyone agrees, few Americans are putting aside enough for retirement. Those who do must contend with thorny thickets of rules and regulations. As a result, financial planners devote more and more time to questions relating to the transfer, withdrawal and bequeathing of retirement funds.

Meanwhile, basic investing leaves people utterly bewildered: Thousands of mutual funds. More than a thousand exchange traded funds. A confusing, ever-growing array of packaged investment products. (If a fund is formed to invest in a portfolio of hedge funds that invest in other hedge funds, do you call it a fund of funds of funds?)

In "the landscape of confusion and tedium that characterizes our financial lives," Lieber observes, "every task seems to require its own multichapter management manual."

•

Most investors won't read the manuals; they will seek human guidance. They are most likely to turn to brokers, who can't always offer disinterested help. Hence the well-intentioned movement to transform investment salespeople into fiduciaries.

Can this 21st-century alchemy succeed?

Trusteed IRAs

When IRAs were introduced in 1974, they sounded complicated. An IRA had to be more than just an account. An IRA had to have a bank as custodian or trustee.

Ferrari 458

Long ago that technicality vanished from public view, but now it turns out to be useful. Enter the trusteed IRA. The trustee sees to it that the beneficiary (nobody needs a Ferrari, dude!) takes no more than the required minimum distribution.

Julie Jason discusses trusteed IRAs here and offers an example.

How to Build a $100-Million IRA

If Mitt Romney may have done it, perhaps you can, too. (Hint: working for a private-equity firm helps a lot.) WSJ subscribers can read the story here.

And don't feel too jealous. Remember, in a classic IRA capital gain is taxed as ordinary income.

Update: Courtesy of Politico, here's the WSJ story.