I had a discussion with my retirement planning folks just last week about this. It does impact retirement planning, but depending on how you have been saving, it does not have to be such a huge impact.
The big take-away is that the govt wants its tax on earnings and they want it sooner rather than later, thus the change that affects PRE-TAX retirement accounts. If you save or convert to Roth or other post-tax retirement IRA’s, etc, there is no impact.
Perhaps more importantly, the tax savings by taking the hit tax early and not using PRE-TAX retirement mechanisms is huge, like 7 to 8 figures huge over the course of a 30 year retirement. Again, it seems like a big hit to convert from non-Roth to Roth and take that tax hit now, but over time, the tax savings far outweighs (by orders of magnitude) paying the tax today and having future gains tax free.
This has made ROTH IRA so much more attractive, both for conversions, and,
for current savers.
I am not opposed to Roth IRAs on principle, but when I was told by my retirement account manager to consider a conversion from my traditional IRA to a Roth IRA back in the late 1990s I told him it was a terrible idea. Here was my rationale:
If you convert a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, you have to pay the tax on the asset now. This facilitates the conversion of a PRE-TAX retirement account to a retirement account where you won't pay tax at some unspecified future time. The problem I have with this process is that nothing prevents Congress from passing a law between now and the date of your retirement that turns withdrawals from an "untaxed" Roth IRA into a taxable event.
In other words ... I figure it's better to have a certain tax break today than bank on one in the future that might disappear.
I'm not a financial advisor, but I found it very telling that my retirement account manager STOPPED advising clients to do Roth conversions very soon after I had this conversation with him.