This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA). In 1974 via the ERISA law, Congress made this new type of retirement plan available for employees whose employers who could not provide them with the traditional type of retirement plan. In 1981, the plans were made generally available to all taxpayers. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 limited the deductibility of IRAs by income.
1997 saw the launch of the Roth IRA, as a part of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. This type of IRA came with no deductibility, but earnings (and contributions) would be tax free upon distribution, following the rules associated with the accounts.
With the exception of changes to limits of contributions, income limits, and catch-up provisions, little has changed for these accounts since 1997, with the exception of the introduction of the Roth-IRA-like myRA account that was established in 2014 for the 2015 tax year.
According to information from the Employee Benefit Research Institute, as of the most recent data available (2012), 19.9 million Americans had at least one IRA account, and the total amount of money held in those accounts was approximately $2.09 trillion.
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