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Gold IRA marketing runs on rules most buyers never read. These are the questions people actually type into a search box, answered from the statute, IRS pages, and the Tax Court, with links to the deeper guides where one exists.
General information, not legal, tax, or financial advice. Figures reflect the sources on each linked page and change over time; the linked pages carry the details and citations.
The rules
What is IRA-eligible gold?
Two categories qualify under IRC 408(m)(3): specific government coins, including American Gold, Silver, and Platinum Eagles and coins issued under state law, and bullion meeting the minimum fineness a futures exchange requires for contract delivery. The purity decimals dealers quote, like .995 for gold, come from exchange contract specs rather than IRS text. Everything else, including collectible and numismatic coins, is a prohibited collectible: buying one inside an IRA is treated as a taxable distribution of what the account paid.
No. Qualifying bullion must stay in the physical possession of the IRA trustee or custodian, and the U.S. Tax Court held in McNulty v. Commissioner (2021) that taking personal possession, even through an LLC the IRA owns, is a taxable distribution. The taxpayer who tested it owed more than $250,000 plus penalties. Every legitimate gold IRA stores metal at a commercial depository.
No. IRA contributions must be cash, and selling your own property to your IRA is a prohibited transaction under IRC 4975 because you are a disqualified person to your own account. The lawful path is contributing or rolling over cash, then having the IRA buy metal from a dealer.
Are gold IRAs approved or insured by the government?
Neither, in the way marketing implies. The IRS approves banks and nonbank trustees to act as IRA custodians, and publishes that list, but it does not endorse dealers or metals. And precious metals are not FDIC insured; FDIC coverage applies to bank deposits. Depositories carry private insurance on stored metal, which is worth confirming, but that is commercial insurance, not a government guarantee.
Not when done correctly. A trustee-to-trustee transfer is not a distribution at all and has no frequency limit. An indirect rollover, where the money passes through your hands, must be redeposited within 60 days and is limited to one IRA-to-IRA rollover per 12 months; workplace plans paying you directly generally withhold 20 percent. Miss the rules and the amount becomes ordinary income, plus a 10 percent additional tax under 59 and a half.
Like any IRA, which surprises people. Gains inside the account are not taxed as they occur; traditional accounts are taxed as ordinary income when money is distributed, and Roth qualified distributions are tax free. The 28 percent collectibles capital gains rate applies to metals held in taxable accounts, not to IRA distributions.
Traditional IRAs owe required minimum distributions starting at 73, and physical metal does not pause that. The RMD is calculated in dollars, so an account holding only bars and coins must either sell metal or distribute coins in kind to satisfy it. Roth IRAs have no lifetime RMDs.
It passes to the named beneficiaries like any IRA, under the same inherited IRA rules: most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty the account within 10 years of the owner's death under the SECURE Act framework, while spouses have more options. The metal itself can typically be sold by the custodian or distributed in kind. Beneficiary designations control, not your will, so keep them current.
Among companies that publish figures, expect roughly $50 to set up, $75 to $150 per year for the custodian, and $100 to $150 per year for storage, so around $200 to $300 annually before the biggest cost: the dealer spread between what you pay for metal and what they buy it back for. The spread is rarely advertised, which is why we weight fee transparency heavily in our comparison.
The IRS sets no minimum; dealers do. Of the companies we track, Augusta Precious Metals publishes a $50,000 minimum, Goldco $25,000, and American Hartford Gold does not publish one. Annual contribution limits ($7,500 plus a $1,100 catch-up for 2026) only cap fresh contributions; rollovers and transfers from existing retirement accounts have no dollar limit.
Why is the gold price I see different from what dealers charge?
Charts quote the wholesale spot price. Coins and bars sell at a premium above spot covering minting, distribution, and dealer margin, and buybacks happen below the sell price. The gap between the two, the spread, is the real cost of owning physical metal.
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