By Helen Hills

I was happy to see Charles Lane’s commentary on Bob Dylan’s tax-privileged windfall upon the sale of his vast musical intellectual property [“Bob Dylan’s financial dream,” op-ed, Dec. 15].

Mr. Lane did not mention, in his otherwise-thorough critique of the disparate tax treatment of income and capital gains, the “wool-over-the-eyes” deception that was mounted in the form of 401(k), individual retirement accounts and other market-based employee retirement accounts.

Corporate interests benefited when the responsibility and risk of funding employee retirement pensions was shifted to employees through the creation of these mechanisms.

The argument that ordinary workers should be able to participate in the gain of financial markets is a double-edged sword precisely because of that risk transfer. Further, the premise was that a tax-deferred contribution would benefit employees who would take their earnings in retirement and be taxed at a lower rate.

But for a retirement income, the income tax is not “more tolerable.” For older retirees, the entire amount is taxed as income. By contrast, any wealthy market investor, calling that growth “capital gains,” would pay a much lower rate on the gain.

Additionally, capital losses can be ameliorated in their taxation formula — not so for the traditional IRA or 401(k) retiree. So those whose actual labors generate economic productivity are, again, actively disadvantaged by the U.S. taxation system.

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