Adam N. Michel
Adam N. Michel and Joshua Loucks
About 5 million taxpayers pay, on average, $6 billion in penalties each year for spending their retirement savings earlier than the government prescribed. These penalties make lower-income Americans financially worse off and discourage others from saving at all.
Universal savings accounts (USAs) fix this problem. They would give more Americans access to a savings system that protects their investments from multiple layers of tax without punishing them for needing to access their funds on their own timeline.
Benefits, Costs, and Complexity of Current System
The US tax system levies income and payroll taxes on worker’s wages. If any income is saved and invested, the increase in value is taxed again by levies on interest, capital gains, dividends, business income, and transfers at death. Each of these taxes reduces the market’s incentive to save. Qualified savings accounts limit this built-in bias against saving by removing individual-level taxes on investment.
Over half of nonretired adults protect their savings from double taxation by investing through qualified accounts—employer-administered 401(k) retirement accounts, Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), and 529 Plan education savings accounts. Taxpayers can contribute tax-deferred income (traditional accounts) or after-tax income (Roth accounts) without any other taxes owed. However, Congress decided that access to qualified accounts should be conditioned on saving for specific purposes. The most widely used accounts are for retirement and come with a 10 percent tax penalty for accessing the savings before age 59.5. A similar penalty applies to improper use of funds from other accounts.
For many young and low-income Americans, the limits discourage them from using the accounts at all. Americans who use these accounts and then have to access their money early for a family emergency or job loss face new layers of taxes. Many low-income workers are automatically enrolled in these programs by their employers, » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/penalty-american-savers-how-usas-fix-it