IRA, so as to provide, say, children and grandchildren with long-term income-tax free annuities. Nevertheless, even if those beneficiaries had to take the balance of the Roth IRA within five years of the owner's death, they still would be receiving income-tax free dollars — something that would not be the case if they had simply “inherited” a traditional IRA with its built-in income tax liability. In other words, by converting a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, the owner is accomplishing something akin to what happens with a defective grantor trust (see above): relieving the beneficiaries of an income tax liability they would otherwise have to pay. e Limit the size of retirement benefits. Under current law, there are limits as to how much individuals can accrue under a defined benefit plan (such as a pension plan), or how much they can contribute to IRAs and various defined contribution plans, such as 401(k)s. There are no limits, however, as to how much individuals can accumulate in these tax-preferred accounts. Because of this, the proposal explains, individuals can accumulate more than is needed to fund “reasonable levels of consumption in retirement...well beyond the level of accumulation that justifies tax-advantaged treatment of retirement savings accounts.” The proposal would therefore cap the size of a taxpayer's various retirement accounts by barring additional contributions (or accruals) if, in total, the accounts exceeded what was necessary to provide the maximum annuity permitted for a defined benefit plan: currently $205,000 per year for a hypothetical 62 year-old and her spouse (this equates to accumulations of about $3.4 million). When a taxpayer’s accounts hit that ceiling, they could still grow through investment returns, but additions to the accounts would only be allowed if the maximum permitted annuity increased, or the taxpayer's investment returns for a given year were less than the actuarial assumptions underlying the annuity. If an addition