Courtesy of Pam Martens.
Yesterday the Senate Finance Committee convened a hearing to chew on one humdinger of a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO report found that 314 taxpayers have squirreled away at least $25 million in their Individual Retirement Account (IRA) for an aggregate of $81 billion for all 314 taxpayers. That puts the average account within the $81 billion at an astonishing $258 million.
The GAO used 2011 data, the most current available to them from the IRS, and noted that since some of the tax returns were for joint filers, the term “taxpayer” may mean an individual or a couple. Still, even two IRA accounts tallying up to $258 million is off the charts.
The figures are raising eyebrows in Congress. No one can say with any certainty how an IRA could grow to such astronomical sums. IRAs have only been around since 1975. Adding to the perplexity, the GAO calculated that if a person made the maximum IRA contributions from 1975 through 2011 and invested the money in the Standard and Poor’s 500, it would have grown to only $353,379.
Senator Ron Wyden, Chair of Senate Finance Committee Taking Testimony on Retirement Plans for Americans
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, chairs the Senate Finance Committee and opened the hearing with this assessment of the magical IRAs:
“So how did those massive IRA accounts come to be? In many cases, they’re sweetheart stock deals that most investors would never have access to. Executives buy stocks at a special, rock-bottom price – sometimes fractions of a penny per share – and use an IRA as a tax shelter. The stocks start out dirt cheap, but just like that they turn to gold, and the IRA shoots up in value.”
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