What Role Can Employers Play in Facilitating Trump Accounts?

Trump Accounts launched nationwide on July 4, but employers’ interest in them and efforts to help their workers realize the accounts’ full potential for their families’ well-being are far from set.

Panelists on three webinars hosted this summer by the Employee Benefits Research Institute, Aon PLC and Vanguard said employers can help employees save without necessarily incurring costs on the balance sheet. Leveraging their positions as trusted sources, employers can educate their employees on what they need to know to open an account and address any hesitations around investing.

“There’s an incredibly high return on a fairly modest investment that you, as an employer, [can] make,” said Timothy Flacke, co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth, a nonprofit focused on building financial security among financially vulnerable populations, during EBRI’s September 1 webinar. “There’s … evidence that you can build incredible employee goodwill by investing [in], offering tools or facilitating access to tools that help workers do right by their children and families.”

The Light Employer ‘Lift’

Compared with sponsoring a retirement plan, the effort and the investment on the part of the employer supporting a Trump Account “can be dramatically lower,” according to Flacke. Employers have a choice as to what role—or roles—they might play in helping employees decide whether to invest.

Trump Accounts were created in 2025 by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. They are a type of individual retirement account established for eligible children, with rules on special contributions, investments, distributions and reporting generally applying through the end of the year in which the beneficiary turns 17. Through a pilot program, children born from 2025 through 2028 are eligible for a one-time $1,000 federal seed deposit.

On August 11, the Department of Treasury outlined rules allowing employers to contribute as much as $2,500 annually tax-free to Trump Accounts for employees’ dependents and permitting workers to make pre-tax contributions through cafeteria plans. More than 50 companies have already committed to making contributions, according to Treasury.

Under Treasury’s proposal, employer contributions made through a qualifying Trump Account contribution program can be excluded from an employee’s gross income. The exclusion is capped at $2,500 per employee for 2026 and 2027 and is subject to inflation adjustments after 2027. The limit applies to the employee, rather than to each dependent, meaning a worker with multiple children could not receive a separate $2,500 contribution and income exclusion for each child’s account.

Section 125 of the Internal Revenue Code enables employee pre-tax contributions, while Section128 permits employer contributions. Melissa Elbert, a partner in Aon’s wealth solutions group, emphasized during her firm’s August 13 webinar on that the choice of which to offer is not mutually exclusive—employers can offer a combination of both employee pre-tax and employer contributions as long as the total contributions do not exceed $2,500 per employee.

Employers can “help employees save without directly committing employer dollars,” Elbert said. While employer contributions are optional, some employers have already taken the initiative to consider whether direct employer contributions “fit within their overall rewards strategy.”

Communication Strategies

During the Aon, webinar, Elbert said that employers already serve as employees’ trusted source of information and often resources on topics such as retirement benefits, health plans and financial well-being programs. Credibility on those topics may give employers a leg up on effectively helping their employees invest—and overcome barriers to investing.

Emily Bergman, an associate director at Commonwealth, shared on Vanguard’s August 11 webinar exclusive survey results that revealed the biggest Trump Account information gaps are among families living on low-to-moderate incomes, defined as earning $30,000 to $80,000 annually. When considering whether to sign up a child up for an account, 21% of families living on LMI wanted to know how the account grows over time, 18% wanted to learn whether their child was eligible for the $1,000 federal seed funding and 18% wanted details on what the money could be used for.

Some 27% of respondents to Commonwealth’s survey said they worried about the accounts’ impacts on their taxes and public benefits, 25% thought they could not afford to contribute and 25% said their distrust of President Donald Trump’s administration dissuaded them from investing.

Commonwealth also conducted parent interviews, finding the branding of the accounts with the president’s name steered some eligible participants away from opening accounts. As a result, Commonwealth created a messaging framework that recommended employers focus on the “benefits of the accounts—including federal and philanthropic seed funding and long-term wealth-building potential—while using both ‘530A’ and ‘Trump’ together to clearly identify the accounts without leaning into political branding.”

Based on the interviews, the firm also recommended employers:

• Use the term “investing account” rather than “saving account,” to emphasize “long-term growth and opportunity”;
• Frame the accounts as ways to help children “get started,” rather than focusing on retirement or college savings; and
• Provide straightforward explanations about legitimacy, the government’s role, penalties, flexibility of use and how the accounts compare to 529 college savings accounts.

Bergman said during the Vanguard webinar that the parents Commonwealth surveyed frequently learned about Trump Accounts through peer networks, social media and other informal channels. However, they frequently viewed professionals and employers as “formal, trusted communicators for clarification, validation and guidance” and sought to speak with them before deciding whether to open the accounts.

“Families are aware [of Trump Accounts] and some are already moving [on them], but there’s a real window right now [for employers] to step in with trustworthy, plain language guidance,” Bergman said. 

“If participation is going to be meaningful, the process [of enrolling] will need to be intuitive and straightforward for your workforce,” Elbert added.

During the September 1 webinar, Craig Copeland, EBRI’s director of wealth benefits, revealed that 38.7% of all large employer respondents to a forthcoming EBRI survey said they planned to provide new or additional support for employees related to the accounts in the future.

The Commonwealth survey was fielded in July among more than 1,000 parents of children age 10 or younger or people expecting a child, with household incomes ranging from $30,000 to $80,000 per year. EBRI did not immediately respond to a request for its survey methodology.