Small Business 401k - What You Need to Know

A small business 401k has a design to providefor dollar up to three percent of their
your business with the resources it needs tocompensation.
offer your employees a retirement plan. The• When you do contribute, your contributions
401k retirement plan is one of the best optionsare tax deductible.
available to individual's today. As a business owner,• Consider vesting. If you want to put your
you have options. The IRS has put in place amoney into an employee but you want to
number of different types of 401k plans thatsafeguard those funds to keep the employee
make it highly affordable for business owners toworking for you, consider vesting the money.
offer this option to their employees. StatisticsOver time, the amount of vesting increases until
show that employees are most likely to be loyal ifthe employee reaches 100 percent at which time
their employer provides them with importantall employer contributions are available to the
benefits, including retirement plans.employee.
Your OptionsThe rules for establishing a 401k are not as
There are a number of 401k retirement plandifficult as you may think and the costs overall
options available to small business owners. Inare minimal for doing so. As mentioned, there are
short, there are a variety of ways for you totax benefits to the employer and employees may
customize this plan to have more options.be encouraged to stay with your company if you
Consider the following options you have.offer them a retirement plan. Best of all, you can
• The employer can elect the types ofshop around for the right investment firm to
contributions they wish to make. You decide ifobtain the 401k plan from, which means you have
you want to contribute to the employee's plan orplenty of options to select from and lower costs
not.due to the competition.
• If you do decide to contribute, under theAs a small business owner, you may have
traditional 401k plan, you determine whatthought that you simply could not offer your
percentage of the employee's compensation youemployees any type of retirement plan. That is
wish to contribute.not the case. In fact, you are likely to find
• Consider the safe harbor 401k plan whereyourself with opportunities to tailor a plan that
you can match the employee's contributions dollarworks for your small business 401k needs.