A Federal Retirement Portal Is Coming for the Self-Employed. Here's How to Get Ready in 20 Minutes.

If you run a one-person business, freelance, or hold down a side gig with nobody in HR reminding you about a 401(k), the federal government just put a date on your calendar worth knowing.

On April 30, an executive order directed the Treasury Department to launch a new website, TrumpIRA.gov, by January 1, 2027. Its purpose is one most self-employed people will recognize on sight: make it easy for workers without an employer plan to find low-cost IRAs, compare them apples-to-apples, and start saving without an HR onboarding flow to lean on. The portal itself is eight months away. The planning work that makes it useful when it launches is most of the value, and you can do it in about twenty minutes this weekend.

What is actually coming on January 1

The portal will list IRAs that meet a hard cost cap, a 0.15 percent net expense ratio, no minimum contribution, no minimum balance. That single filter narrows a confusing decision into a small handful of accounts you can open the same day. The order is silent on which institutions will appear, but expect most major brokers to launch new low-cost product lines specifically aimed at the directory.

The bigger thing alongside the portal is the Saver's Match. This is a federal matching program baked into the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, switching on January 1, 2027. The match phases down across an income range rather than cutting off at a single cliff: single filers get the full 50% match up to roughly $20,500 MAGI and phase out completely around $35,500. Heads of household phase out between roughly $30,750 and $53,250. Joint filers get the full match up to roughly $41,000 and phase out completely around $71,000. If you qualify, the government will match 50 percent of your retirement contribution up to $1,000 per year. So a $2,000 contribution from a qualifying low-income solo worker becomes $3,000 in their account.

You do not need TrumpIRA.gov to capture the Saver's Match. Any qualifying IRA at any reasonable broker will work. The portal exists to make the comparison cleaner, not to gatekeep the matching dollars.

Why this matters if you are self-employed

The retirement-savings gap for self-employed workers is famously large. Roughly 56 million American workers do not have access to an employer plan. Most of them are independent contractors, freelancers, gig workers, and one-person business owners. Solo 401(k)s, SEP-IRAs, and SIMPLE IRAs all exist for this group, but the friction to set one up is real, and the comparison shopping is exhausting if you do not do it for a living.

What the new portal does is shrink that friction. What it does not do is start contributing for you. The single biggest predictor of retirement readiness for a self-employed person is not which account they pick. It is whether they ever actually opened one.

That is the reason this weekend matters more than next January. The eight months between now and the portal launch is the part that quietly does the work.

The 20-minute weekend prep

Pick a Saturday or Sunday and run through this in order. None of it requires opening a new account today. It just makes the decision faster when the portal lights up.

Five minutes: figure out which account fits. If you are a sole proprietor with no employees, a Solo 401(k) usually wins for higher contribution limits ($23,500 employee deferral plus 25 percent of self-employment income, up to a $70,000 combined cap in 2025). If you are earning under $35,000 from self-employment, a Roth IRA or traditional IRA is simpler and usually enough. SEP-IRAs slot in between, particularly if your income is variable year over year. The IRS has a single readable comparison sheet at Publication 560.

Five minutes: pull your last tax return. Find your Schedule SE or Schedule C. Note your modified adjusted gross income and your self-employment income for the year. These two numbers determine both your contribution cap and your Saver's Match eligibility, and they are far easier to find this weekend than next December when you actually need them.

Five minutes: check the income thresholds. The Saver's Match phases down across a range: single filers from roughly $20,500 to $35,500 MAGI, heads of household from $30,750 to $53,250, joint filers from $41,000 to $71,000. Inside that range you still get a partial match. If you are close to or inside the phase-down, this affects whether a Roth or a traditional contribution makes more sense before year-end. If you are well above the upper bound, the Saver's Match is not your move, but the IRA contribution itself still is.

Five minutes: set a calendar reminder for early December. December is when most self-employed people miss the contribution window. They wait for tax-filing season and discover that contributions for the prior year have a deadline of April 15, but the Saver's Match calculation closes earlier and is tied to the calendar year. A December 1 reminder titled "Decide retirement contribution amount before year-end" prevents the most common miss.

That is it. Twenty minutes that turns "I should look into retirement someday" into a calendar entry with a number attached. Compliance preparation that compounds, much like the rest of the calendar covered in our small business compliance checklist.

What is still moving between now and January

Two things are likely to change before the portal goes live, and both are worth keeping a soft eye on.

The qualifying IRA list. The 0.15 percent expense cap is unusually strict. Most broad index funds clear it, but a lot of "small business retirement" packaged products will not without restructuring. Expect a wave of new low-cost product lines from major institutions specifically aimed at the TrumpIRA.gov directory. The list of accepted institutions and funds is not yet public.

The income thresholds. The Saver's Match figures from the SECURE 2.0 Act use 2024 baselines and are due for an inflation adjustment before they go live. The actual 2027 thresholds will be published by the IRS later this year. If you are close to the cutoff, that final number changes the math.

The order is also silent on default investment options inside the qualifying IRAs, transfer mechanics if you already have a Roth or traditional IRA elsewhere, and the procedural side of claiming the Saver's Match (almost certainly through your tax return, but the form has not been issued). Those details will surface in the Treasury rulemaking between now and launch. If you treat retirement-savings rules the way most one-person businesses treat tax deadlines, our small business tax deadlines guide walks through the rhythm of staying ahead of changes that compound quietly.

The bottom line

The federal government is making it easier for self-employed workers to find a retirement account, and is putting a thousand dollars a year on the table for lower-income solo workers. The portal does not exist yet, and the matching program does not turn on until January. But the prep work that determines whether you actually use either one is the part you can do this weekend, in twenty minutes, with a tax return and a calendar app. Create a free Bizmoon account to get federal rule changes that touch your business surfaced before everyone else hears about them.