<prompt> Human: As the latest in my get a grip series, stop worrying about the changes President Obama proposed regarding 529 plan tax treatment. For those of you that dont know, he proposed eliminating the provision for tax free gains when used for qualified education expenses in the State of the Union address. This sort of legislation is almost never retroactive, so people with existing contributions will more than likely still be able to take advantage of tax free gains when used for qualified higher education expenses. Both houses of Congress are Republican this session. If you thought Congress wasnt acting on the Presidents proposals before, we likely havent seen anything yet. Nobody can predict the future any more or less accurately than the next person. Proposals to change the 529 plans tax treatment have come up before, but education is such a political hot potato that nobody wants to be the guygal that votes for it. If you have an existing 529 plan or are thinking about starting one, make the decision as if nothing is going to change. Because in reality, nothing is likely to change.As a reminder, 529 plans for children should generally come after all tax advantaged retirement savings accounts are maxed out for the year or are on track to be maxed out. Your children can take out loans for college, you cannot take out loans for retirement.  <response>: This is a repost of my comment in the other thread that basically agrees with you. However Brevity is not my forte.Regardless of ones politics this one is dead on arrival in this congress. Using the articles numbers, which are pretty close, 70 of the balances in those accounts are held by families making over 200K. Since the amounts, at some point in the future, would be become taxable many of those with incomes over 200K. Now with them no longer getting a tax break many will no longer use a 529 plan as it has been used as a tax strategy. Now the current amount held in 529s is 245 billion in assets. If 70 of those dollars are held by people who get no tax write off and leave the total balance in plans will eventually fall to 73.5 Billion which means Investment companies just lost access to 171.5 billion dollars to play with, not really as it will probably go into another investment vehicle, but that is how they look at it.If you think a Republican Congress, not an accusation but there platform is for more private investment versus government, is going to allow that I want some of what you are having. There are all kind of technicalities about good and bad how much of each it is are driven by political views. I see some problems with it achieving its desired funding goals as that money is going to bail and it will no be there to be taxed. I am personally for what this plan is trying to accomplish but I do not think it will succeed. so I would not loose any sleep over it. 