IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joaced/v33y2015i2p164-181.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A teaching note on the tax benefits of retirement savings

Author

Listed:
  • Schwartz, Steven T.
  • Spires, Eric E.
  • Young, Richard A.

Abstract

Typical textbook treatments of tax-advantaged retirement savings plans focus on legalistic characteristics such as contribution limits and early withdrawal penalties. Popular press articles on these plans often present a myriad of details on the effects of inflation, rates of return, expected tax rates, ordinary income versus capital gains treatment, and other items that tend to obscure their fundamental tax advantages. The goal of this teaching note is to expose the fundamental tax advantages of retirement savings plans by conducting an analysis of a simplified tax setting. We identify four interrelated benefits of existing retirement plans – tax-deferred contributions, tax-deferred earnings, never-taxed earnings, and income smoothing with progressive tax rates. We also provide a more in-depth analysis of the choice between the two most popular forms of retirement savings, traditional and Roth accounts. An understanding of the properties of the tax benefits of retirement savings can be useful for students who are preparing for careers as tax professionals, as well as individuals who wish to understand the financial planning advice they receive.

Suggested Citation

  • Schwartz, Steven T. & Spires, Eric E. & Young, Richard A., 2015. "A teaching note on the tax benefits of retirement savings," Journal of Accounting Education, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 164-181.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:joaced:v:33:y:2015:i:2:p:164-181
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jaccedu.2015.02.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0748575115000184
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jaccedu.2015.02.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Burman, Leonard E. & Gale, William G. & Weiner, David, 2001. "The Taxation of Retirement Saving: Choosing Between Front-Loaded and Back-Loaded Options," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association, vol. 54(n. 3), pages 689-702, September.
    2. Rydqvist, Kristian & Schwartz, Steven T. & Spizman, Joshua D., 2014. "The tax benefit of income smoothing," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 78-88.
    3. Burman, Leonard E. & Gale, William G. & Weiner, David, 2001. "The Taxation of Retirement Saving: Choosing Between Front-Loaded and Back-Loaded Options," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 54(3), pages 689-702, September.
    4. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2005. "Financial Literacy and Planning: Implications for Retirement Wellbeing," CeRP Working Papers 46, Center for Research on Pensions and Welfare Policies, Turin (Italy).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rydqvist, Kristian & Schwartz, Steven T. & Spizman, Joshua D., 2014. "The tax benefit of income smoothing," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 78-88.
    2. M. Martin Boyer & Philippe d’Astous & Pierre-Carl Michaud, 2019. "Tax-Sheltered Retirement Accounts: Can Financial Education Improve Decisions?," Cahiers de recherche 1902, Chaire de recherche Industrielle Alliance sur les enjeux économiques des changements démographiques.
    3. Gaobo Pang, "undated". "Tax-Deferred Savings and Early Retirement," Research Reports 3, Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
    4. Mattia Landoni & Stephen P. Zeldes, 2020. "Should the Government be Paying Investment Fees on $3 Trillion of Tax-Deferred Retirement Assets?," NBER Working Papers 26700, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. James Poterba, 2004. "Valuing Assets in Retirement Saving Accounts," NBER Working Papers 10395, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Horan, Stephen M. & Peterson, Jeffrey H., 2001. "A reexamination of tax-deductible IRAs, Roth IRAs, and 401(k) investments," Financial Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 10(1-4), pages 87-100.
    7. Frank Caliendo & W. Cris Lewis, 2004. "The Effect of the Current Ira Program on Federal Debt," Public Finance Review, , vol. 32(3), pages 331-351, May.
    8. Joshua Woodruff & William B. Haskell & Alejandro Toriello, 2016. "Optimized Financial Systems Helps Customers Meet Their Personal Finance Goals with Optimization," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 46(4), pages 345-359, August.
    9. Mariana Carrera & Heather Royer & Mark Stehr & Justin Sydnor, 2020. "The Structure of Health Incentives: Evidence from a Field Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 1890-1908, May.
    10. Richard L. Johnson, 2003. "Portfolio choice in tax-deferred and Roth-type savings accounts," Research Working Paper RWP 03-08, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    11. Brown, David C. & Cederburg, Scott & O’Doherty, Michael S., 2017. "Tax uncertainty and retirement savings diversification," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(3), pages 689-712.
    12. Saul W. Adelman & Mark L. Cross, 2010. "Comparing a Traditional IRA and a Roth IRA: Theory Versus Practice," Risk Management and Insurance Review, American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 13(2), pages 265-277, September.
    13. Kovács Erzsébet & Vaskövi Ágnes, 2020. "Pension Pessimism in the Young Generation: Basics or Instincts to Blame?," Business Systems Research, Sciendo, vol. 11(2), pages 117-131, October.
    14. Anna Ispierto Maté, Irma Martínez García, Gloria Ruiz Suárez., 2021. "Educación financiera y decisiones de ahorro e inversión: un análisis de la Encuesta de Competencias Financieras (ECF)," CNMV Documentos de Trabajo CNMV Documentos de Trabaj, CNMV- Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores - Departamento de Estudios y Estadísticas.
    15. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2008. "Planning and Financial Literacy: How Do Women Fare?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 413-417, May.
    16. Mitchell, O.S. & Piggott, J., 2016. "Workplace-Linked Pensions for an Aging Demographic," Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, in: Piggott, John & Woodland, Alan (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Population Aging, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 865-904, Elsevier.
    17. Goda, Gopi Shah & Manchester, Colleen Flaherty & Sojourner, Aaron J., 2014. "What will my account really be worth? Experimental evidence on how retirement income projections affect saving," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 80-92.
    18. Kamer Karakurum-Ozdemir & Melike Kokkizil & Gokce Uysal, 2019. "Financial Literacy in Developing Countries," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 325-353, May.
    19. Goda, Gopi Shah & Levy, Matthew R. & Flaherty Manchester, Colleen & Sojourner, Aaron & Tasoff, Joshua & Xiao, Jiusi, 2023. "Are retirement planning tools substitutes or complements to financial capability?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 561-573.
    20. Sergio Longobardi & Margherita Maria Pagliuca & Andrea Regoli, 2018. "Can problem-solving attitudes explain the gender gap in financial literacy? Evidence from Italian students’ data," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(4), pages 1677-1705, July.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joaced:v:33:y:2015:i:2:p:164-181. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-accounting-education .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.