Archive: Michael Wicklein
Introduction The U.S. Treasury estimates that the tax preference for employer-sponsored retirement plans and IRAs reduced federal income taxes by about $185-$189 billion in 2020, equal to about 0.9 percent of gross domestic product. Other estimates of the costs are even larger. However, the best evidence suggests that the federal tax preferences do little to…
The brief’s key findings are: Investing part of Social Security’s reserves in equities has obvious appeal: a higher return means less tax hikes or benefit cuts. But critics fear that equity investment could interfere with private markets or signal that trading bonds for stocks creates magic money. The evidence from the U.S. and Canada shows that suc…