A 401k alternative for employees may be coming through TrumpIRA.gov — giving your team a better path to retirement savings, and it costs you nothing.
If you're a business owner who's been meaning to set up a retirement plan for your team but keeps putting it off…I know why.
You know you should. You've probably looked into it at least once. And then you saw the setup costs, the admin, the fiduciary liability, the annual compliance testing, and you closed the tab. The overwhelm is real.
It went right back on the "someday" list.
Well, business owner, good news. On April 30, the White House made "someday" unnecessary.
On April 30, the White House announced TrumpIRA.gov — a federal platform that is intended to connect workers who don't have an employer-sponsored retirement plan to low-cost, private-sector IRAs.
It's not a new type of account. It's actually a marketplace. Think of it like a government-backed comparison site where your employees can browse IRA options from established providers, compare fees and features, and open an account on their own.
The key word there is on their own.
You don't set it up. You don't fund it. You don't administer it. You don't take on fiduciary responsibility. You don't file anything extra. You don't manage a single enrollment form.
You just tell your team it exists.
Here's the number that should get your attention: 56 million American workers don't have access to a retirement plan through their job.
That's not a fringe population. That's roughly a third of the private-sector workforce. And a disproportionate share of them work for small and mid-sized businesses - businesses exactly like yours.
If you have part-time employees, hourly staff, seasonal workers, or people early in their careers, chances are some of them are in that 56 million. They're not saving for retirement. Not because they don't want to…because nobody gave them a vehicle to do it through.
Until now, the options for a business owner who wanted to help were expensive and complicated:
TrumpIRA.gov doesn't replace any of these. But for the business owner who wasn't going to set up any of them anyway, it removes the biggest barrier: you don't have to do anything except share a link.
Here's what makes this powerful for lower-wage workers.
Under SECURE 2.0, employees who contribute to a qualifying IRA may be eligible for the federal Saver's Match - up to $1,000 per year deposited directly into their retirement account by the U.S. Treasury.
This is not a tax deduction. This is not a credit that reduces what they owe. This is actual money. Cash from the government, deposited into their account on top of whatever they contribute.
Beginning with 2027 tax returns filed in 2028, the Saver's Credit is expected to be replaced by the Saver's Match. You can see the IRS preview of this change on IRS Form 8880.
The match is available to workers with adjusted gross income below certain thresholds, which means it's targeted at exactly the population that's been most underserved by the current retirement system: the people who need it the most and have had the fewest options.
Your employees can check their eligibility and learn more at TrumpIRA.gov once the site is available.
Let's say you run a business with 15 employees. Five of them are full-time with access to benefits. Ten are part-time, hourly, or newer hires without a retirement plan.
Before this announcement, helping those ten people meant setting up a plan, choosing a provider, taking on liability, and adding a line item to your overhead.
Once TrumpIRA.gov is available, it may look like this:
That's it. That's the whole process.
This doesn't replace professional retirement planning. If you're a business owner evaluating your own retirement strategy - Solo 401(k), SEP, defined benefit plan, or something more complex - TrumpIRA.gov isn't designed for that. It's designed for employees who have nothing.
This isn't a substitute for a 401(k) if you can afford one. A well-structured 401(k) with employer matching is still one of the most effective retention and compensation tools available. If you're in a position to offer one, you should. But if you're not there yet, this is a real alternative that helps your people right now.
The Saver's Match has income limits and eligibility requirements. Not every employee will qualify. The details are on the site and your CPA can help you understand who benefits.
You should still talk to your CPA about the bigger picture. TrumpIRA.gov solves one problem - access. It doesn't address your own retirement strategy, your entity structure, your tax planning, or how all of these connect. Those conversations still matter.
If you are planning around retirement accounts, Roth conversions, year-end deductions, or your entity structure, this is where broader tax strategy matters. You may also want to read 2025 Year-End Retirement Deductions for Business Owners.
Share the link. TrumpIRA.gov. Put it in your next team email, mention it in your next staff meeting, pin it in your Slack channel.
It costs you nothing. It takes five minutes. And for the employees on your team who've never had a retirement savings vehicle, it could be the thing that changes their trajectory.
You don't need to set up a 401(k) to be the kind of employer who cares about their team's future.
You just need to send a link.
If you want to talk about how this fits into the bigger picture - your own retirement strategy, your business's benefits positioning, or what else changed in the tax code this year, I'm here for that conversation.
Book a 15-minute strategy check