Retirement Tax Shields: A Cohort Study of Traditional and Roth Accounts

Abstract

Previous research has shown the theoretical circumstances under which Roth accounts outperform traditional accounts. In this paper, we inform the traditional-or-Roth choice for current workers by examining the retrospective tax benefits of each account type for the 2003 cohort of retirees. We use the actual history of marginal tax rates at the individual level to estimate that the average tax shields of traditional and Roth retirement accounts---the excess value of retirement consumption financed by those accounts relative to brokerage accounts---were 73% and 46% respectively. Traditional accounts were better for this cohort largely due to tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. Under a counterfactual with inflation-adjusted 2019 law, the average tax shields for traditional and Roth accounts would have been much closer (37% and 29% respectively), and around one third of savers could have consumed more during retirement by saving in Roth accounts rather than in traditional accounts. This is the first paper to apply the history of marginal tax rates---informed by administrative income records---to compare Roth and traditional accounts for a particular cohort of retirees.

Keywords: Retirement, Traditional, Roth, Defined Contribution

JEL Classification: J32, H24, D15