Be Like Thiel: How Affluent Tech Workers Mimic the Tax Tricks of the Mega-Rich

Billionaire Peter Thiel turned heads when it was revealed that he had used a retirement account intended for the middle class to shelter some $5 billion in savings that grew from his investments in PayPal shares purchased at a discount.

But similar tax-sheltering techniques have become commonplace among a less rarefied group of Silicon Valley workers. For years, tech companies, including Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple, have quietly offered access to similar types of retirement accounts, giving their employees a way to shift as much as three times more money into retirement savings accounts than workers with more-traditional retirement plans and never pay taxes on the gains.