I am a private practice surgeon, business is an s-corp with myself being the only employee of my business. I do not have any ownership of the medical practice (4 partners), but share overhead and pay rent for the building. We have 8 FTEs in the office and do not currently have an office retirement plan, long story but has been frozen for 6 years, mismanagement, etc. All this was before I joined the group. As such, I have been contributing to an i401K for my retirement at my CPAs recommendation. My other partners are very gun shy about creating another company plan for the employees given they just finished paying $200K in ERISA lawyer fees.
I have been investigating other options for a DBP to add to my i401K and found out that I am probably leasing the employees to run my business so I can not contribute to a 401k any longer (much less start a DBP) without creating a safe harbor plan for them. Is this true? Does anyone else out there have a similar setup where they have an i401K with only one employee (self) who is also the employer (self)? If a i401K is not an option for a retirement plan, how can I put away retirement monies in a tax-advantaged way? The last thing I want is a tangle with ERISA, but I am surely not the first high-income earner to be in this situation.
Comment