Since retiring from a university position 8 years ago (I'm now well into the mandatory minimum distribution age range), I've done a modest amount of consulting (on the order of $10K/year total billings) and put the allowed deductible contributions from this income each year into a conventional Keogh plan set up for that purpose. This Keogh is one component of a retirement portfolio managed by TIAA-CREF, which also includes several standard IRAs accumulated during my earlier employment.
Our tax adviser has suggested that there could be some useful, though not necessarily compelling, advantage to rolling the funds in this Keogh account over into a SEP-IRA account that would be set up in the same portfolio (I have no such SEP-IRA at the minute). I could then make any future year contributions from consulting income to this SEP-IRA (although this income is likely to taper down fairly rapidly in any case).
This proposal seems reasonable to me, and TIAA-CREF says, sure, we can easily set up a new SEP-IRA and roll your Keogh over into it. My only query here is whether there are any hidden problems or serious "gotchas" that might emerge later if I did this?