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[quote=Anonymous]It's very hard to know.  Depends on your tax rate now, and your tax rate in 40 years and some other factors.

Strictly speaking, if you were going to contribute $15k, and your tax rate is 33% now and in the future, then it doesn't matter if you contribute pay $5k in tax now, and let the $10k grow, vs. if you put the $10k and the $5k in the 401k, and then withdraw it and pay the $5k plus its earnings to the govt as tax (you can think of the $5k being in its own account to cover taxes).

The stickier questions are: 1) are you paying a higher rate now than you will later-- generally people expect income tax rates to go up, but you may find yourself in a a lower tax bracket in retirement any way? 
and
2) can you (under the plan and your finances) pay $15k into the Roth 401k, which is effectively comparable to putting 20k into a regular 401k (because paying the tax on it now isn't counting against your contribution limits for retirement, even though effectively that's what it is).

A Roth IRA is more flexible than a regular IRA (for example it does not have minimum distributions and fewer penalties), but I don't know if the same is true for Roth 401ks.

Personally, I think the best advice is to have some money in both pre-tax and after-tax retirement accounts, because there's no way to know how the law will change.  Maybe Congress will pass a surtax on Roth accounts, maybe tax rates will go up.  Maybe they won't.  Just like you want to be diversified in different asset clases, I would try to be diversified for different tax situations.
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