When a small business owner is forced to use retirement savings to pay employees' salaries or an unemployed person is forced to use retirement savings to pay their bills, it adds insult to injury to then force that person, who is already in a desperate situation, to pay taxes and penalties on that money. Certainly, there must be a way to allow people who can document their need to withdraw retirement savings tax and penalty free for very specific reasons. While their would be some fiscal cost associated with this plan, it would go a long way toward keeping people out of bankruptcy and homes out of foreclosure. To keep these costs down, I suggest implementing the moratorium for a set period of time, say 5 years, beginning January 1, 2009 & allow people to file for a return of taxes paid.
This is historical material “frozen in time”. The website is no longer updated and links to external websites and some internal pages may not work.
