You can exclude employees who are covered by a collective bargaining unit OR who are nonresident aliens with no U.S. source of income. Also excluding employees who haven’t met the eligibility requirements.

Any type of employer, including a self-employed individual, can establish a SIMPLE IRA plan, but the employer must have 100 or less employees. When considering the 100-employee limit, employers must count individuals employed by the business during the previous calendar year who earned $5,000 or more. Also, employers using a SIMPLE IRA plan are restricted from having any other type of employer-sponsored retirement plan.

Establishing the SIMPLE IRA plan with a document that names a designated financial institution (DFI), all contributions will be made to SIMPLE IRAs held at that specific institution. If the document does not specify a DFI, employees can establish their SIMPLE IRAs at any financial institution they choose.

A SIMPLE IRA plan doesn't affect your ability to make annual contributions to a traditional or Roth IRA.

Additionally to your SIMPLE IRA contributions, you can make traditional or Roth IRA contributions of up to $6,000, plus a $1,000 catch-up contribution if you are 50 years or older. By participating in a SIMPLE IRA plan it may affect your cabability to take a tax deduction for a traditional IRA contribution (depending on your income.)

Establishing a SIMPLE IRA plan requires three steps:

1. The employer must sign a written SIMPLE IRA plan document. The IRS offers these free to use to adopt the plan. Custodians and IRA trustees also provide SIMPLE IRA plan documents.

2. The employer is obligated to notify each eligible employee that the SIMPLE IRA plan has been set in place and also provide them with information about the plan.

3. Each employee that is eligible must set up a SIMPLE IRA that will receive the contributions.

Each year, employees can defer up to $13,500, plus an additional $3,000 catch-up contribution if they are 50 years of age or older.

An employer is required to make either a matching contribution (dollar-for-dollar up to 3% of salary), or a nonelective contribution (2% contribution for all eligible employees). The 3% matching contribution can be reduced to as low as 1% for 2 out of every 5 years. On your business tax return, employer matching or nonelective contributions are deductible.

A SIMPLE IRA plan is easy to set up, simple to over see, and reasonably priced compared to other types of retirement plans. There are also no compliance tests and employers are not required to file annual reports with the IRS. For this type of plan, employees share the responsibility of funding the plan with their employers.

A SIMPLE IRA plan stands for Savings Incentive Match Plan for Employees. It is a retirement savings plan adopted by a business that allows both employers and employees to make retirement savings contributions. Each eligible employee sets up a SIMPLE IRA to receive the plan contributions.

You can set up a SIMPLE IRA plan any time between January 1 and October 1 in the year you first adopt the plan. For example, an employer that wants to make a SIMPLE IRA plan contribution for 2018 would generally have until October 1, 2018, to set up the SIMPLE IRA plan.

For a SIMPLE IRA, you can take distributions including employer matching or nonelective contributions, at any time. Typically, the distribution will be included in the taxable income in the year of the distribution, but may be subject to a 10% early distribution penalty – if you are not yet age 59½.

Your SIMPLE IRA plan must cover all employees who

earned $5,000 or more in compensation in any 2 preceding calendar years, and
are reasonably expected to earn that much in the current year.
You can choose to apply less restrictive eligibility requirements.