The Economic Growth And Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA for short) was a big tax overhaul passed during the Bush-the-Younger’s presidential administration. If “EGTRRA” isn’t floating your boat, you can just call it—like many do—the “Bush tax cuts.”
So what did the Bush tax cuts...cut? It put a ceiling on the estate tax, lowered capital gains tax on property or stock help more then five years, and lowered income tax brackets for everyone—like it was a limbo bar at a party. How low can you go?
For some context, EGTRRA was passed when the US was in a rare time of budget surplus, before a lot of stuff hit the fan (the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Great Recession of 2008). The US now has a huuuuge deficit. Yep.
EGTRRA did more than cut things, though. It also allowed those over 50 to make higher retirement account contributions, and created new employee-sponsored retirement programs (the Sidecar IRA, the Roth 401(k), and the Roth 403(b)...the OG Roth IRA was already invented, just so ya know).
One thing to know about EGTRRA was that it was supposed to be temporary, i.e. to “sunset,” meaning everything would go back to normal in 2011. But instead, Congress extended the Bush tax cuts in 2010. And then taxes were lowered yet again under the Trump admin, at a time when the US was right under the trillion-dollar-deficit mark. The deficit is predicted to skyrocket into the trillions, given that the US is spending a lot more money than it’s raking in.
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Finance: What is a 401(k)?52 Views
Finance a la shmoop... what is a 401k plan? okay say it with me tax deferred savings
that's it it's really not all that complex for the fancy numbers there all [Complex formula scribbles]
right well when you make money at work you get to defer the tax that you'll pay
on your income or earnings to be paid much later in life and you get to invest
that dough and let it ride tax-free until you take it out of your 401k plan [Money coming out of deferred savings piggy bank]
brokerage account and then at that point well you'll pay ordinary income tax on
your gains well the 401k was a part of the tax code
that was put into motion in the 1980s as the government began to painfully
realize that Social Security wasn't all that secure and that a whole generation
of people who had paid money into Social Security wouldn't get anything back so [People protesting outside the white house]
the government opened the door and made it easy or at least easier for the semi
wealthier masses to save money for their retirement and this was a new idea at
the time a whole new concept like a flying car before then it was mama [Man talking and flying car goes by a window]
corporation who managed the pension money for her employees you know that
sucking off the corporate teat and all that stuff well it fostered a sense of
long-term lifetime loyalty to the company and was all just very you know
IBM like a born in pinstriped blue diapers IBM employee with a hard loyal [Baby boy playing with a flashing rattle]
workforce working away there toiling in the IBM salt mines for 35 years
then retiring at 60 and having smoked a lot dying at age 65 and then that was
all she wrote well that was then this is now it's a different era different
financial pressures so companies don't generally offer pensions today and they
don't generally manage them themselves because the cost of buying real talent
like people who consistently beat the stock market in good times and
bad managing that 401k money is astronomically expensive and generally [Boxing gloves punching the stock market]
speaking corporations can't afford to pay those people nine times whatever
the CEO makes so companies generally contribute some amount of money to a
401k and then they leave it up to the employees to figure out how they want to
invest their retirement savings on their own and that's a good thing most of the
time and you know hopefully it's there when they want to go take it out and
they need the money when they're old and decrepit like like I'm getting...
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