529 account

Retirement legislation has been a welcome area of bipartisan cooperation in the U.S. Congress, marked by a history of Republican and Democratic bill co-sponsorship and support. A recent example is the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act—the SECURE Act—passed and signed into law in 2019. The SECURE Act has been hailed as the most important retirement enhancement legislation in more than a decade.

May 3, 2022 - Senators Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) have introduced S. 4103, the Helping Parents Save for College Act. The bill would provide low- and middle-income parents with a tax credit for contributions to 529 education savings accounts by expanding the Saver’s Credit. The credit would be worth up to 50 percent of 529 account contributions, with a maximum credit of $2,000 for low-and-middle income families.

For the past three years, Congress has attempted to pass major retirement reform legislation. It has finally succeeded with the year-end passage of two spending packages meant to avert a government shutdown. One of the packages, the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020 (FCAA), includes multiple bills—including the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, which contains several major retirement-related provisions. These provisions are nearly identical to those included in an earlier version of the SECURE Act that was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in May 2019. At the time of this publication, the President had not yet signed these bills into law. But it is widely anticipated that he will.