Individual retirement account

An individual retirement account (IRA) in the United States is a form of pension provided by many financial institutions that provides tax advantages for retirement savings. It is a trust that holds investment assets purchased with a taxpayer's earned income for the taxpayer's eventual benefit in old age. An individual retirement account is a type of individual retirement arrangement as described in IRS Publication 590, Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs). Other arrangements include employer-established benefit trusts and individual retirement annuities, by which a taxpayer purchases an annuity contract or an endowment contract from a life insurance company. There are several types of IRAs: Traditional IRA – Contributions are often tax-deductible (often simplified as "money is deposited before tax" or "contributions are made with pre-tax assets"), all transactions and earnings within the IRA have no tax impact, and withdrawals at retirement are taxed as income (except for those portions of the withdrawal corresponding to contributions that were not deducted). Depending upon the nature of the contribution, a traditional IRA may be a "deductible IRA" or a "non-deductible IRA". Traditional IRAs were introduced with the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and made popular with the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. Roth IRA – Contributions are non-deductible and transactions within the IRA have no tax impact. The contributions may be withdrawn at any time without penalty, and earnings may be withdrawn tax-free in retirement. Named for Senator William V. Roth Jr., the Roth IRA was introduced as part of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. myRA – a 2014 Obama administration initiative based on the Roth IRA SEP IRA – a provision that allows an employer (typically a small business or self-employed individual) to make retirement plan contributions into a Traditional IRA established in the employee's name, instead of to a pension fund in the company's name.