The Hottest Tax Break for the Rich Is a Middle-Class Retirement Account

Most Americans rely on retirement accounts as a way to eventually stop working without falling into poverty. For the rich, they’ve become something more — a powerful tool to avoid taxes and pass on wealth to heirs.

More than $279 billion sits in mega-IRAs, individual retirement accounts with at least $5 million each, according to Congress’s nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. Despite rules designed to limit IRA contributions by the wealthy, almost 29,000 Americans hold these giant accounts, and nearly 500 of them somehow managed to get $25 million or more into their IRAs.