Automatic IRAs Proposed in Congress

Friday, June 07, 2013

By Joe Cicchinelli, IRA Technical Expert

Follow Me on Twitter: @JoeCiccEdSlott

Approximately half of all Americans work for employers that currently don’t have a retirement plan. That works out to be around 78 million employees. This issue, combined with a declining national savings rate and the projected funding problems of the Social Security system, has forced some lawmakers to propose ways to entice Americans to increase their savings for retirement. One example of such proposed legislation is the Automatic IRA.

The Automatic IRA Act of 2013 (H.R. 2035) has been introduced in Congress by Representative Richard Neal (D-MA). The proposed legislation would, if passed into law, create an IRA-based employer retirement plan to allow employees to automatically save for their retirement.

It would require businesses that don’t offer a retirement plan and employ 11 or more employees who earn at least $5,000 in the prior year to set up an automatic IRA savings plan. Employees would be automatically enrolled in the plan unless they opt out. Instead of automatically enrolling employees, the employer could ask the employees to make a choice to participate or not participate in the plan. Any employee who didn’t make a choice would then be automatically enrolled. Not all employees would have to be covered under the automatic IRA plan. For example, employees who have worked less than 3 months or employees under age 18 could be excluded.

The funds would be withheld from the employee’s paycheck and deposited into his or her IRA. The amount that would be withheld would generally be 3%, although a rate between 2% and 6% could be chosen. The funds would be invested in certain required investments, including mutual funds, certificates of deposit, and insurance contracts.

The Automatic IRA program is not a new proposal; it’s been around for a couple of years and has been proposed in the past. It’s unknown whether it will be enacted into law in the future. Check back at The Slott Report for updates.
 

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