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Talk:Comparison of 401(k) and IRA accounts/Archives/2016

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Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Comparison of 401(k) and IRA accounts/Archives/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

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Still start class ready. I'm seeing some of the same poor information here that I've seen at financial related websites, which misses some important facts regarding standard IRA withdrawals. I've added some comments in the dicussion field to bring this info to light.

Every recommendation I've seen of Roth IRAs over traditional IRAs makes the assumption that when someone withdraws from a traditional IRA that they will be paying the marginal tax rate on the entire withdrawal without factoring in deductions, exemptions, or the lower tax brackets that are paid into before even reaching the marginal tax rate. It's possible to be in the 25% tax bracket, yet only pay a very small amount of taxes at the 25% rate, such as if your only income is your IRA withdrawal, which just barely reaches into the 25% tax bracket after deductions. It's not just a matter of whether the marginal tax rate is higher at retirement than while contributing as is often stated as the primary determining factor. It's the effective tax rate that really matters. When factoring these elements into the calculations, the traditional IRA is the much better investment in this example contrary to the previously posted calculations which didnt take those important realities into consideration.

69.44.28.121 (talk) 02:58, 23 March 2008 (UTC)Harley

Last edited at 00:48, 27 August 2012 (UTC). Substituted at 12:07, 29 April 2016 (UTC)