The Trump Account Employer Perk Skips the Owner — Including Self-Employed Farmers
You can contribute $2,500 for your employees into a Trump Account and deduct it but not for your own children
Here’s a trap worth flagging before a client gets excited about the new $2,500 employer contribution to Trump Accounts: the owner usually can’t take it for their own kids.
The new rules let an employer put up to $2,500 per employee into a Trump Account and exclude it from that employee’s wages — a genuine tax-free fringe benefit under Section 128. The catch is who counts as an “employee.” The proposed regulations limit it to common-law employees and say self-employed individuals were intentionally left out.
For a farm, that means a sole proprietor — a Schedule F farmer — can fund $2,500 into their employees’ accounts tax-free, but not into their own children’s accounts through this route. The owner isn’t an employee of the operation, so there’s no tax-free contribution for the boss.
