I've spent many hours researching online and this seems like the most knowledgeable forum around for retirement account issues.
- age 33, want to retire at 55
- sole owner of a consulting biz/LLC earning 300k/year for the next 5 years at least, taxed as S corp, no employees
- may join another totally separate company next year as full time employee (wouldn't impact consulting biz) and would be eligible for their 401k plan
If the goal is maximum tax efficiency, what's the best combination of accounts to achieve this? From what I've read I believe it's a combination of solo 401k + DB plan. How would the #s work on that, assuming the first year DB contribution was something like 40k? Do I need to pay myself 100% of comp in salary (versus distribution) in order to max out? I talked to a couple different CPAs and got differing answers, one said that the two accounts are aggregated together in terms of contribution limits and the other disagreed; it's clear that even very qualified people are confused by some of this material.
