Susan L

If the NJ SACT is a qualified plan and the member has not reached the required beginning date (70 1/2), then the after-tax portion could be rolled to the Roth IRA, while the not yet taxed earnings could be rolled to a traditional IRA. From the IRS website: Can I roll over my after-tax contributions to a Roth IRA and the earnings on my after-tax contributions to a traditional IRA? Yes. Earnings associated with after-tax contributions are pretax amounts in your account. Thus, after-tax contributions can be rolled over to a Roth IRA without also including earnings. Under Notice 2014-54, you may roll over pretax amounts in a distribution to a traditional IRA and, in that case, the amounts will not be included in income until distributed from the IRA.

This sounds like a 414(h) governmental pick up plan, which is the only way I am aware of that mandatory employee contributions can be considered pre-tax (https://www.irs.gov/government-entities/federal-state-local-governments/employer-pick-up-contributions-to-benefit-plans ). Like you, I'll be interested to hear if anyone knows of a way to do mandatory employee contributions in a plan that is not a governmental plan.