Tax-Deferred Contribution

Tax-Deferred Contribution

A contribution to a retirement plan on which the contributor does not pay taxes until a later date. One reduces one's taxable income by the amount of the tax-deferred contributions, shielding those contributions from taxation. However, one eventually pays taxes on these contributions when one begins to make withdrawals from the retirement plan. Those contributions (and their investment income) are taxed as ordinary income upon withdrawal. One makes tax-deferred contributions to reduce one's tax liability in the near term in hopes that one's income (and therefore one's tax liability) will be lower after retirement.