New York Times: The Health Care Law and Retirement Savings, by Casey B. Mulligan (University of Chicago, Department of Economics):
Because of its definition of affordability, beginning next year the Affordable Care Act may affect retirement savings.
Employer contributions to employee pension plans are exempt from payroll and personal income taxes at the time that they are made, because the employer contributions are not officially considered part of the employee’s wages or salary (employer health insurance contributions are treated much the same way). The contributions are taxed when withdrawn (typically when the worker has retired), at a rate determined by the retiree’s personal income tax situation.
Employees are sometimes advised to save for retirement in this way in part because the interest, dividends and capital gains accrue without repeated taxation. In addition, people sometimes expect their tax brackets to be lower when retired than they are when they are working.
These well-understood tax benefits of pension plans will change a year from now if the act is implemented as planned. Under the act, wages and salaries of people receiving health insurance in the law’s new “insurance exchanges” will be subject to an additional implicit tax, because wages and salaries will determine how much a person has to pay for health insurance.
While much about the Affordable Care Act is still being digested by economists, they have long recognized that high marginal tax rates lead to fringe benefit creation. And the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that the act will raise marginal tax rates.
Were an employer to reduce wages and salaries (or fail to increase them)
and compensate employees by introducing an employer-matching pension
plan, the employee is likely to benefit by receiving additional
government assistance with his health-insurance costs. … Even though the Affordable Care Act is known as a health-insurance law,
in effect it could be paying for a large portion of employer
contributions to pension plans.
(Hat Tip: Mike Talbert.)
