Greg Mankiw Blasts Another Obama Tax Proposal

I guess we should be used to this:

President Obama's budget is going to include some kind of penalty for people who have accumulated more than $3 million in retirement accounts. The details are not yet known, but I think we know enough to say that this is a terrible idea. A sizable body of work in public finance suggests that consumption taxes are preferable to income taxes. Completely replacing our tax system with a better one is, however, hard. Retirement accounts, such as IRAs and 401k plans, are one way our tax code has gradually evolved from an income tax toward a consumption tax. The use of these accounts should be encouraged, not discouraged. By the way, exceeding $3 million in such accounts is not very difficult for an individual who is financially successful and frugal.

Greg explains by noting some folks can readily put away $50,000 a year. The median worker, however, cannot. But there may be something else afoot here as Brian Beutler explains:

One way experts believe financial managers avoid the current annual contribution limit to IRAs is by using IRAs to participate in investments and assigning those investment interests a nominal value vastly below fair market.

Brian cites as an example some clever tax planning done by a chap named Mitt Romney.