Self-Employed? Maybe You Should Supercharge Your Retirement

Read this if you would be interested in getting a $230,000 tax deduction.

You can sock away $7,000 in a tax-sheltered IRA, if you’re older. You can do $26,000 with a 401(k) deferral. Or you could be using an entirely different vehicle to put the contribution deep into six-figure territory.

Up for discussion here is a “defined benefit” retirement for self-employed people. It’s complicated. It has fees attached. But it can save a bundle for high-paid self-employed people like doctors and lawyers.

Here’s how the game is usually played. Well into a career—say, at age 50—you open up a retirement plan calling for a specified annual payout beginning at a young age, like 62. To pay for that benefit, you have to accumulate a large sum.

So much to do in so little time! Or so you say to the Internal Revenue Service, with some hired actuaries backing you up. They inform you that, in order to make your target payout possible,…