This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

President Trump hopes that tax reform will give the economy a boost, but where are the benefits

to savers?

The Cato Institutes Ryan Bourne and Chris Edwards say any serious tax reform

should include what they call universal savings accounts which have shown

tremendous success in Great Britain and Canada.

Well, Universal Savings accounts are essentially supercharged Roth IRAs.

Basically, people would put money into these savings accounts so we think up to

ten thousand dollars a year would be a good contribution limit. And then you can withdraw the money

any time for any reason in the future the earnings would compound over time completely tax free so you could you know save up for a family vacation

save up for retirement save up for a family vacation, save up for retirement,

save up for health care education, anything you wanted to.

I think these accounts would revolutionize savings.

Bill's been introduced in Congress

by Senator Jeff Flake and Representative David Brat.

And we have good real world experience

with such accounts.

Both Canada and Britain have introduced these accounts in recent years and they've been a really great success.

Well the important thing from an economic perspective when you're thinking about tax reform is you want to move towards a situation where taxes are

neutral between different types of activity and the beauty of these accounts is that they're not

only neutral between consumption and saving because they exempt the returns from saving from being

...