The Startup Insiders Who Stash Huge Sums in Tax-Subsidized Retirement Accounts

The average American family has about $268,300 in individual retirement accounts. Gregory Baszucki’s holds at least $68 million—and possibly a whole lot more.

Baszucki, 61 years old, is one of hundreds of people who bought stakes in promising startups when the shares were worth peanuts, stashing them in retirement accounts and watching their values balloon to eight figures or more. What they are getting, essentially, is the mother of all tax breaks.

IRAs and workplace retirement accounts were created to help working Americans save for old age by providing tax incentives for doing so. The accounts have been supercharged by startup founders, hedge-fund managers and Silicon Valley insiders who have access to investment opportunities unavailable to most Americans.

Those entrepreneurs and their financial backers are increasingly using that strategy to pile up giant retirement-account balances, all subsidized by U.S. taxpayers, The Wall Street Journal determined by analyzing regulatory filings, government data and other documents. The number of people with giant retirement accounts has soared in recent years, aided by booms in both stock prices and startup formation.