SIMPLE IRA Tutorial

A SIMPLE IRA is a retirement plan that may be established by employers, including self-employed individuals (sole proprietorships and partnerships), for the benefit of their employees. The acronym stands for "Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees." And IRA is, of course, "Individual Retirement Account."

The SIMPLE IRA allows eligible employees to contribute part of their pretax compensation to the plan. This means the tax on the money is deferred until it is distributed. This contribution is called an elective-deferral or salary-reduction contribution.

Employers are required to make either matching contributions – based only on elective-deferral contributions made by employees – or nonelective contributions, which are paid to each eligible employee regardless of whether the employee made salary-reduction contributions to the plan. For a matching contribution, the employer's contribution may match the employee's elective-deferral contribution dollar for dollar, up to a maximum of 3% of the employee's compensation.

Like other employer plans, the SIMPLE IRA allows employers a tax deduction for contributions they make to the SIMPLE IRA plan.

Contributions to a SIMPLE IRA are not taxed, but distributions from a SIMPLE IRA are.

Why Establish a SIMPLE IRA?

Unlike qualified plans, a SIMPLE IRA plan is easy to administer. The start-up and maintenance costs for SIMPLE IRAs are very low compared to qualified plans. Because the responsibility of funding the SIMPLE IRA is shared between the employer and employee, employees have some degree of control over how much and when (the years in which) their SIMPLE IRAs may be funded.