IRA Paperwork

Individual Retirement Account - IRA

An Individual Retirement Account (IRA) is, in the words of the Internal Revenue Service, "essentially a 'no fuss, no muss' situation" and the most basic sort of retirement plan. There are four different types of IRAs.

  1. Payroll deduction IRAs: IRAs where an employee establishes an individual retirement account with a financial institution and the employee then authorizes a payroll deduction for the IRA with the remainder of the employee's pay distributed to the employee as before. There are two different varieties of payroll deduction IRAs: Traditional and Roth. With a Traditional IRA, contributions may be tax deductible - either in whole or in part. The earnings on the funds in your Traditional IRA are not taxed until they are distributed and the portion of the contributions that was tax deductible also does not get taxed until distributed. With a Roth IRA, contributions are not tax deductible. However, while distributions (including earnings) from a Traditional IRA may be included in income, the distributions (including earnings) from a Roth IRA do not count as income. For both types, earnings remaining in the account are not taxed.
  2. Simplified Employee Pension (SEP): A SEP is a plan that gives employers a simplified method to contribute toward their employees' retirement and their own retirement. In a SEP, contributions are made directly to an IRA set up for each employee (called a SEP-IRA).
  3. Salary Reduction Simplified Employee Pension Plan (SARSEP): A SARSEP is a SEP that was set up before 1997 and includes a salary reduction arrangement. Because a SARSEP is still a simplified plan, the administrative costs should be comparatively low. Instead of establishing a separate retirement plan, employers in a SARSEP make contributions to their own IRA and the IRAs of their employees. These contributions are subject to certain restictions such as dollar amount caps and percentage-of-pay limits.
  4. SIMPLE IRA: A SIMPLE IRA is a Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees. SIMPLE IRA plans give small employers, as the name would tend to indicate, a simplified method to contribute to their employees' retirement, as well as their own. With this plan, employees may choose to make salary reduction contributions, with the employer making matching or non-elective contributions. All contributions are made directly to an IRA set up for each employee (the SIMPLE IRA).

This Web site is intended for general information purposes only. It does not nor is it intended to constitute legal, tax or investment advice. Alliance America is not a lawyer, registered investment advisor or investment advisor representative, and is not engaged in the practice of law or the business of investment advice.