Set up your SIMPLE IRA
in minutes, not weeks.

You answer ten questions about your business. We generate your filled Fidelity adoption packet as one PDF, plus the employee notices and the enrollment instructions each employee uses to open their own account. You print the packet, sign in ink, and mail it to Fidelity. After that we show you exactly what to enter in payroll, track every deadline, and remind you before each one. Setup takes about 10 minutes of your time.

Not us. Every employee owns their own SIMPLE IRA at a qualified, IRS-approved custodian, and contributions go from your payroll directly to those accounts. IRAPilot never holds or touches the funds. We prepare the documents, track the deposit deadlines, and keep the records.

IRAPilot is built and run by Guido Trevisan, a Chartered Retirement Plans Specialist who also owns Menlo Insurance Services, a licensed California insurance brokerage. The software costs nothing because the payoff is reputation: doing visibly good work on SIMPLE IRAs is how a specialist earns the trust of small business owners, and some of them choose to work with Menlo later on their own. There are no ads, no hidden fees, and your data is never sold, never used for ads, and never shared with Menlo.

You must have 100 or fewer employees, contribute either a match up to 3% of pay or a 2% contribution for everyone, deposit employee money within 7 business days of each payroll, and give employees a 60-day notice each year. Nothing is filed with the IRS: you sign the plan document and keep it in your records.

Employees can defer $17,000+ (higher limits apply for businesses of 26 to 100 employees that elect them), plus a catch-up at age 50 and a larger one at ages 60 to 63. Every limit applies per calendar year, and the figures reset each January.

Under roughly 25 employees, usually yes: same pre-tax savings and employer match, but no annual Form 5500 filing, no nondiscrimination testing, and a fraction of the cost. When you outgrow it, federal law lets you convert to a safe-harbor 401(k) mid-year.

IRAPilot works alongside any payroll system, or none. There is no payroll integration and contributions never move automatically: your payroll withholds the deferrals and you send each deposit to the custodian. IRAPilot shows you exactly what to enter for each employee, tracks each payroll's 7-business-day deposit window, and reminds you until the money is in.

October 1, 2026 for existing businesses. Start after that and the plan generally counts for the following year (new businesses formed after October 1 get an exception).

No. SIMPLE IRAs were designed for exactly this, and one W-2 employee is enough to start (and enough to trigger most state mandates). The startup credit covers 100% of plan costs up to $250 per eligible employee per year for three years. Note it requires at least one employee who isn't an owner or high earner, and it offsets taxes you owe rather than paying cash.