Talk:Individual retirement account

See Talk:Retirement plan Chris 02:54, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hi, you moved this material in from Pension, but it is barely correct for a general discussion of IRA's:

As defined contribution retirement plans, IRA's are characterized by a lack of institutional sponsor to guarantee future benefit amounts, so the individual has to assume the risk of future investment returns being less than expected. In return, the individual gains the flexibility to tailor the portfolio to his or her liking.

The basic problem is that the terms DC and DB only apply to employer sponsored plans (They are from Erisa era legislation I believe) and are not applicable to Roth, traditional or rollover IRA's. That makes the above innapropriate for this article. In addition an IRA can be funded with a fixed annuity that does offer guaranteed pricipal and can offer guaranteed income, making the statement misleading at best. - Taxman 03:56, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Excellent point. That's why I was trying to attract the attention of others to help with these topics--getting a little cross-eyed after all that reorganizing. Thanks for all the great edits and feedback. Chris 04:49, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Speaking of pedantic, "pedantics" is not a word. One could use pedantries, pedanticisms, etc.

You could if the pedantic was getting a little silly in their pedanticisms. --SheeEttin 01:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

On Linking To This Article

If you're including a reference to Individual Retirement Accounts elsewhere, be aware that 'IRA' is the very well-known abbreviation for the Irish Republican Army; so if you write a sentence like "The American Silver Eagle bullion coin may be used to fund IRA investments," (as the American Silver Eagle page used to say), British readers are likely to read this as "The American Silver Eagle coin is probably used to fund terrorism" - which probably isn't what you meant.... TSP 20:36, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Correct name really is "account"

One hates to nit pick, but the statement that the "umbrella" term for the concept is legally Individual Retirement Arrangement instead of account is simply incorrect. The individual retirement account was created by amendments to the Internal Revenue Code made by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), which enacted (among other things) Internal Revenue Code sections 219 and 408 relating to IRAs. Subsection (a) of section 408 defines the term "individual retirement account" and subsection (b) defines the term "individual retirement annuity." An individual retirement account and an individual retirement annuity are two different but related legal concepts under the Internal Revenue Code, and both terms are directly from the statute itself.

IR "accounts" and IR "annuities" are collectively referred to as "individual retirement plans". See Internal Revenue Code section 7701(a)(37).

From a technical legal standpoint, it is therefore incorrect to say that the use of the word "account" is incorrect, as account is the term actually used in the law itself. I'm not sure where the editor who wrote otherwise obtained his or her information, but I invite everbody to look up the actual statute and make the appropriate change in the article. Famspear 00:04, 28 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

[Copied and pasted by me (Famspear) from Taxman's User talk page, to show that Taxman was also partly right and I was partly wrong Famspear 20:55, 30 December 2005 (UTC) :] Dear Taxman: I just added some more information to the article on IRAs about the term "arrangement," which I found also appears in certain Treasury regs (and, as you pointed out, in IRS Pub. 590). The fact that the term is used in a formal Treasury regulation (not just in an IRS publication) shows you were right about the term being used as an "umbrella" term. Therefore, my statement that "arrangement" is not an umbrella term was wrong. Instead, I should have said that the term is just not used that way in the statute itself (where the term is used in a more limited sense). Oh, I just love to split those legal hairs! Famspear 16:35, 29 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Penalty of overinvesting?

What is the penalty if you accidently go over the $4,000/year amount?