The Securing a Strong Retirement Act of 2021, which cleared the House Ways and Means Committee Wednesday, "is going to be easy to pass and is a significant net positive for workers," said Michael Finke, professor of wealth management at The American College of Financial Services, in an interview Wednesday.
The legislation, dubbed the Secure Act 2.0, raises the required minimum distribution age from 72 to 75 over a 10-year period. It also expands automatic enrollment in retirement plans and enhances 403(b) plans.
"This is the kind of bipartisan legislation that makes you think the government could work again," Finke quipped.
"What's key," he explained, "is that it isn't going to break the federal budget, which should help the bill." For instance, provisions that allow "for more savings later in life by indexing the catch-up [contributions] and increasing limits between age 62 and 64 won't be a big tax expenditure, because the tax deferral benefit is modest."
Plus, pushing the RMD age by three years "will happen slowly, so it won't reach age 75 until 2032." This 10-year stretch also "blunts the impact of delaying the RMD, since the government will be able to tax inherited IRAs over a shorter period of time," Finke points out.
Solving an 'Easy Problem'
Like the first Secure Act that became law in late 2019, this legislation "will provide a lot of much-needed improvements to the defined contribution retirement system," the retirement expert says.
"More employees will be saving for retirement, workers will save more of their paycheck, public-sector workers will gain access to lower-cost investments, and retirees and financial planners will have more flexibility to decide how much and when to withdraw funds from an individual retirement account (or IRA)," Finke explained.
In general, retirement issues like changing the age when RMDs begin are "an easy problem, but there's no solution to Social Security that doesn't make a significant number of people unhappy," he said.
"It's likely the Act won't see significant opposition because many of the proposed changes will be embraced by the industry, and few voters think saving more for retirement is a bad idea," according to Finke.
Measures to delay RMDs are "always a crowd pleaser," he adds, "although it's a regressive policy that provides greater tax deferral benefits to wealthier retirees. Most retirees just find them annoying."
