Then it gets a little more complicated. I'd tell you to stop reading and have a beer at this point, if it weren't for the thousands of dollars a year extra you can get by sorting through the complicated stuff. If you've followed what we've gone over so far, then it should be clear to you why things get complicated when there's a staffer the same age as you or older. When you have a plan that benefits older workers such as yourself, they'll also give an extra benefit to older staffers. It's no victory if you contribute more for yourself but then lose all the advantage by having to make a big extra contribution for someone else.
New comparability refers to the ability to do a specialized kind of cross-testing.
It's very technical, but what it comes down to is that you can create different categories of employees for determining whether one person has gotten too much. Let's say that one staffer is as old as the doctor, and the others are younger. When determining whether the plan is discriminatory in favor of the doctor, the doctor can be grouped with the younger staffers. It's all complicated but the results are dramatic. The actual numbers depend on the persons involved, but in the best-case scenario the percentage that the doctor contributes for himself or herself could be several times the percentage contribution made for the staff.