Can I store gold IRA metal at home?

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No. Gold IRA home storage is not permitted, because section 408 requires the metal to sit with a bank or an approved trustee, and the Tax Court treated one such arrangement as a distribution of the entire account in 2021.

The Internal Revenue Code requires the assets of an individual retirement account to be held by a bank or by a trustee the IRS has approved, which rules out a safe in your house regardless of how the arrangement is papered.

Schemes marketed as a home storage IRA or a checkbook LLC typically have the account own a company, the company buy the coins, and you keep them. The Tax Court considered that structure in Andrew McNulty and others v. Commissioner and held that taking physical custody was a taxable distribution of the whole amount, with the tax and penalties falling in the year the metal came home.

The practical effect is that the cost of the arrangement is not the storage fee you avoided but the entire account balance becoming income in a single year, usually with a 10% penalty on top if you were under 59 and a half.

Sources

  1. Internal Revenue Code section 408(a)(2), trustee requirement

    Office of the Law Revision Counsel

    The requirement that IRA assets sit with an approved trustee.

  2. McNulty v. Commissioner, 157 T.C. No. 10

    United States Tax Court

    Physical possession of IRA-owned coins treated as a taxable distribution.