If you’re reading this article it’s probably because you’ve tried to offer a 401k retirement plan and found it to be complicated, confusing, and expensive. With a payroll IRA, small and medium businesses now have an easy way to offer their employees a retirement savings plan without the cost, risk, and complexity of a 401k. No matter what your setup, whether you have all W2 employees, all 1099 workers or a mixture of both, a payroll IRA is the easiest way to offer the people on your payroll a retirement savings plan.
Payroll IRAs are Easy to Set-up and Administer
With a payroll IRA, employers get a “plug-and-play” retirement benefits solution that’s low cost, low risk and, because of its utilization of new technology, incredibly easy to use for employees and employers alike. Icon is a full service, payroll IRA with live customer support, employer and employee onboarding, employee communication, and an easy-to-use dashboard.
With Icon, employers complete minimal paperwork for initial plan set-up and then you send us your payroll information and we take care of the rest. This includes:
- Employee onboarding and education,
- Communication with your payroll service,
- Plan management, and
- Employee removal upon departure from the company.
Once you’ve activated your plan, your employees choose whether or not they want to participate and how much they want to contribute (up to the annual maximum). The only thing you have to do as the employer is approve employees’ contribution amounts.
Payroll IRAs Solve 3 Big Benefits Problems for Employers
First, a payroll IRA satisfies the need to offer all employees a retirement benefit. There’s no need to distinguish between different employee classes or to figure out vesting schedules, because all employees are eligible to participate in a payroll IRA and they’re immediately 100% vested.
Second, it allows employers to offer a retirement benefit without the cost and risk of carrying a 401k plan. With Icon’s payroll deduction IRA, we maintain the fiduciary liability of managing the plan, there are no annual reporting requirements, and no ERISA or nondiscrimination rules to worry about. Icon charges a flat monthly fee based on your company size. Icon is so much more affordable than a 401k plan because we leverage new technology to keep our costs down. The 401k industry is still very paper-intensive and requires a lot of manual plan management, so they tend to charge employers and employees a lot more for their services.
Third, employers have more flexibility in terms of how you reward employees for saving. Instead of a complicated formula used in 401k plans, you can have full discretion on what you give your employees (if anything) through a financial wellness bonus.