Updated: July 30, 2026

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Can you roll your account into a precious metals IRA? Eligibility checker

Most retirement money can move into a precious metals IRA once it qualifies as an eligible rollover distribution. Pick your account type and situation for a general answer. Always confirm specifics with your plan administrator or custodian.

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General guidance only, not tax or financial advice. Eligibility depends on your specific plan document and IRS rules; confirm with your plan administrator and a tax advisor. A direct trustee-to-trustee transfer avoids the 60-day rule and 20% mandatory withholding.

The right dealer explains every fee up front. Get Augusta's free precious metals IRA company checklist.

A self-directed IRA (SDIRA) is not a different tax-advantaged bucket. It is the same traditional or Roth IRA the IRS defines in Section 408 and Section 408A of the Internal Revenue Code, held by a custodian that accepts alternative assets. The contribution limits are identical to a mainstream IRA: $7,500 in 2026, with a $1,100 catch-up at age 50, per IRS Notice 2025-67.

What changes with a self-directed IRA is the asset menu. Instead of the mutual funds a Fidelity or Vanguard IRA lists, an SDIRA can hold real estate, private equity, promissory notes, tax liens, cryptocurrency at some custodians, and IRS-approved gold, silver, platinum, or palladium bullion. The tax treatment does not change. The custodian’s role does.

This guide walks through what an SDIRA is, the rules that limit what it can and cannot own, the prohibited-transaction landmines that can disqualify the entire account, the four-step setup, and the fees to expect. If you are heading toward a precious metals SDIRA specifically, the OPRS shortlist of vetted dealers is where most readers finish. Every number and rule below is footnoted to a primary source at the bottom.

What is a self-directed IRA, exactly?

The Internal Revenue Code does not define the phrase “self-directed IRA.” The IRS defines an IRA under 26 U.S.C. Section 408, and every IRA is technically self-directed in the sense that the accountholder chooses the investments. The industry uses “SDIRA” as shorthand for an IRA whose custodian accepts a broader asset menu than a discount broker will hold.

The custodian is a bank, trust company, or non-bank entity approved by the IRS to hold IRA assets. Discount brokers such as Schwab or Fidelity only custody exchange-traded securities. A self-directed custodian (Equity Trust, Kingdom Trust, STRATA Trust, GoldStar Trust, and roughly two dozen others) will custody real estate deeds, LLC interests, private notes, and bullion held at an approved depository.

Traditional SDIRA vs Roth SDIRA

The same two flavors as any IRA. A traditional SDIRA takes pre-tax contributions and taxes distributions at your ordinary rate. A Roth SDIRA takes after-tax dollars and qualified distributions come out tax-free. The 2026 Roth IRA income phase-out is $153,000 to $168,000 for single filers and $242,000 to $252,000 for married filing jointly (Notice 2025-67).

For a couple planning to hold physical gold through retirement, the Roth SDIRA has a specific advantage: any appreciation on the metals comes out tax-free after age 59½ if the 5-year holding rule is met. The same appreciation in a traditional SDIRA is taxed at the ordinary rate on withdrawal, not the long-term capital gains rate.

What an SDIRA can and cannot hold

The IRS bans two asset classes from every IRA: life insurance (Section 408(a)(3)) and collectibles (Section 408(m)). Collectibles include artwork, rugs, antiques, most gemstones, stamps, coins, and alcoholic beverages. Section 408(m)(3) then carves out four narrow exceptions for precious metals held in an IRA:

American Eagle coins (gold, silver, platinum, palladium proof and bullion)
Any coin issued under the laws of a state
Any gold, silver, platinum, or palladium bullion meeting minimum fineness standards (0.995 for gold, 0.999 for silver, 0.9995 for platinum and palladium), refined by a COMEX or NYMEX-approved refinery
Certain U.S.-minted bullion coins

The metals must be held by the IRA custodian at a qualified depository. You cannot store IRA-owned gold in a home safe. Doing so is a distribution to you at fair market value, taxable in full, plus a 10 percent penalty if you are under 59½.

How to set up a self-directed IRA in four steps

The mechanics are simpler than they look. Where most retirees stumble is picking the wrong custodian for the target asset, not the paperwork.

Step 1: Pick a custodian that accepts your asset class

Not every self-directed custodian handles every alternative asset. Some do real estate but not precious metals. Some do private notes but not LLC interests. Before opening an account, confirm in writing that the custodian will custody the specific asset you plan to buy. Get their fee schedule. Verify they are on the IRS list of approved non-bank trustees or licensed as a state bank or trust company.

Where this matters: for a precious metals SDIRA, the custodian is separate from the dealer that sells you the metal and separate from the depository that stores it. Three parties, three fee schedules, three points of failure. A dealer that walks you through the whole trio (dealer, custodian, depository) is the norm; a dealer that only sells the metal and leaves you to find the other two is not.

Step 2: Open and fund the account

The custodian will send an application, an IRA adoption agreement, and a disclosure document. You choose traditional or Roth, name a beneficiary (this is the piece most retirees forget, and it keeps the account clean for a surviving spouse or heir), and fund the account one of three ways.

New contribution: capped at $7,500 in 2026, plus $1,100 catch-up at age 50 or over (Notice 2025-67). You need earned income at least equal to the contribution.
Trustee-to-trustee transfer: moving an existing IRA balance directly from one custodian to another. Uncapped. Not a taxable event.
Rollover from an employer plan: from a 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), or TSP. Direct (trustee-to-trustee) rollover avoids the 20 percent mandatory withholding and the 60-day redeposit clock. Uncapped. See the IRS rollover chart.

Step 3: Direct the custodian to buy the asset

Once funds land, you submit a purchase direction letter or trade authorization. The custodian pays the seller directly from the IRA’s cash balance. Title is taken in the name of the IRA (for example, “Equity Trust Company FBO Jane Doe IRA”), never in your personal name. For real estate, this affects how deeds are recorded. For precious metals, the invoice and depository storage receipt are both in the IRA’s name.

The custodian does not vet the investment. It confirms the asset is legally permissible for an IRA and that the paperwork is in order. Everything else, including whether the private note will get repaid or whether the coin dealer’s premium is competitive, is on you. The IRS makes this explicit: due diligence is the accountholder’s job.

Step 4: File Form 5498 annually and track fair market value

The custodian files IRS Form 5498 by May 31 each year. It reports the account’s fair market value (FMV) at December 31, contributions, rollovers, and required minimum distribution status. For traded assets like bullion, FMV is straightforward. For real estate and private equity, the custodian usually requires an annual appraisal at your expense.

You do not file anything on Form 5498. The custodian sends a copy to the IRS and to you. Keep it. If the account ever generates unrelated business taxable income (UBTI) above $1,000, the IRA itself files Form 990-T. UBTI shows up on rental real estate held with a mortgage inside the IRA, or on active partnership income. The tax gets paid from account cash, not from your personal funds.

Prohibited transactions and disqualified persons

This is the section where SDIRA accounts fail. Internal Revenue Code Section 4975 lists transactions that disqualify the account. The IRS then treats the entire IRA as distributed on January 1 of the year the prohibited transaction occurred, taxes the full balance at ordinary rates, and adds a 10 percent penalty if you are under 59½. There is no partial fix.

Who is a disqualified person?

Under Section 4975(e)(2), a disqualified person includes:

The IRA accountholder
The accountholder’s spouse
Lineal ascendants and descendants of the accountholder (parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren) and their spouses
The IRA custodian and any fiduciary of the plan
An entity in which any of the above hold, in total, 50 percent or more ownership or voting rights

Siblings, cousins, nephews, nieces, aunts, uncles, and in-laws are not disqualified persons under the statute. That does not mean transactions with them are risk-free; the SEC and DOL can still challenge a transaction as prohibited if it primarily benefits a disqualified person indirectly.

What counts as a prohibited transaction

Self-dealing. Selling property you own personally to the IRA, or buying IRA-owned property yourself. Also lending money to or borrowing from the IRA.
Providing services. Doing repair work on IRA-owned real estate. Even painting a rental yourself is “furnishing services to the IRA.” Pay a third party out of IRA funds.
Personal use. Staying one night in an IRA-owned vacation rental. Storing IRA-owned gold at home. Living in an IRA-owned house.
Compensation. Paying yourself a management fee to run IRA investments.
Indirect benefit. Using IRA funds to invest in a business you control, or lending IRA funds to a company owned by your spouse.

A common misconception: retirees assume small violations trigger small penalties. They do not. The IRS treats the whole account as distributed. If the prohibited transaction is discovered in year 5 on a $300,000 IRA that grew from $150,000, tax is owed on the January 1 year 5 balance at ordinary rates, plus 10 percent penalty if applicable, plus back-interest.

Fees and cash management inside an SDIRA

An SDIRA usually costs more to operate than a Fidelity IRA. The fee structure has three pieces at most self-directed custodians:

Account setup fee: $50 to $150, one-time.
Annual administration fee: flat ($150 to $400) or asset-based (0.15 to 0.75 percent of account value, capped at a maximum). Asset-based schedules get expensive on a large gold IRA.
Transaction fees: $25 to $250 per asset purchase, wire, or storage-transfer request. For active real estate SDIRAs, transaction fees stack up quickly.

Precious metals SDIRAs add two more fees. First, the dealer’s premium over spot, typically 3 to 12 percent for bullion (higher for numismatics that should not be in an IRA anyway). Second, the annual depository storage fee, usually 0.5 to 1 percent of metal value, or a flat $100 to $250.

The industry average for a $50,000 precious metals SDIRA is roughly $250 to $350 per year in custodian and storage costs combined, before any dealer markup on the metal itself.

Worth knowing before you act: the SDIRA must always hold enough cash to pay the annual fees. If the account is fully invested in one illiquid asset (a rental property, a private note) and cannot cover the custodian fee, the custodian will send a notice, then bill the fee as a distribution to you. That distribution is taxable and, under 59½, penalized.

Distributions, RMDs, and SECURE 2.0

Distributions from a traditional SDIRA before age 59½ trigger the 10 percent early distribution tax under IRC Section 72(t), on top of ordinary income tax. A short list of Section 72(t) exceptions waives the 10 percent penalty.

The list includes substantially equal periodic payments, disability, medical expenses above 7.5 percent of AGI, first-time home purchase up to $10,000, qualified higher education, and birth or adoption expenses up to $5,000. SECURE 2.0 added a new exception: up to $22,000 for federally declared disaster relief.

Required minimum distributions

Under the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, the required beginning date for traditional IRA distributions moved to age 73 for anyone who turns 72 after December 31, 2022. It then moves to age 75 for anyone born in 1960 or later (effective January 1, 2033). Roth IRAs have no lifetime RMD, and starting in 2024 Roth balances inside a 401(k) also stopped having lifetime RMDs.

For an SDIRA holding illiquid assets, the RMD problem is real: the custodian calculates the required distribution against the account’s fair market value, but the illiquid asset cannot be partially sold. Three options exist. Distribute the asset in-kind at appraised value (taxable). Sell part of another IRA holding to meet the RMD.

Or aggregate RMDs across multiple traditional IRAs, which the IRS permits: the total RMD can be taken from any one of them. See IRS Retirement Topics: RMDs for the aggregation rule.

SDIRA fraud and how to vet a dealer

The SEC has repeatedly flagged self-directed IRAs as a common vehicle for investment fraud because a bad actor can pitch a private-placement scam wrapped in the credibility of “IRA-approved” language. The custodian never approved the investment. Custodians are prohibited from evaluating merit; their sole job is to hold what you direct them to hold.

What you will need to verify before you fund a self-directed IRA with any dealer:

The custodian is on the IRS approved non-bank trustee list or is a state-chartered trust company. Look them up.
For precious metals: the depository is a COMEX-approved or LBMA-approved vault (Delaware Depository, Brink’s, IDS of Texas, HSBC New York are the common names).
The dealer has a verifiable BBB profile with more than 12 months of history, and complaint volume normalized against years in business.
Any coin the dealer pitches for “IRA eligibility” that trades at a large premium over its spot metal value is a red flag; numismatics do not belong in an IRA, and the dealer margin comes at your expense.

Our view: the biggest SDIRA loss the average retiree takes is not fraud in the criminal sense. It is a legal but overpriced numismatic coin sold at a 30 to 60 percent premium to spot, funded by a rollover from a 401(k) where the retiree never compared premiums across dealers. The OPRS shortlist exists to shorten that comparison.

Common mistakes with self-directed IRAs

Storing IRA gold at home. Marketed as a “home storage IRA” by some LLC promoters. The IRS position is unambiguous: personal possession is a distribution. In practice: the metals must sit at a qualified depository, in the IRA custodian’s name.
Buying real estate you or a family member already live in. Prohibited under Section 4975. Correction: identify a rental property that no disqualified person will occupy, and pay all repairs and expenses from IRA cash.
Missing the 60-day rollover window on an indirect rollover. If you take a distribution check and redeposit into the SDIRA past day 60, the entire amount is taxable. Correction: use direct trustee-to-trustee transfers only.
Underfunding the cash sweep. A rental property SDIRA that generates $8,000 rent per year but accrues $10,000 in repairs plus fees will bounce a payment. Correction: hold 6 to 12 months of expected expenses in the IRA’s cash account.
Ignoring UBTI on debt-financed real estate. If the SDIRA takes a mortgage, the percentage of income attributable to debt is UBTI, taxed at trust rates (up to 37 percent) at low thresholds. Correction: buy real estate all-cash inside the SDIRA, or accept the UBTI drag with eyes open.

When a self-directed IRA is worth it, and when it is not

Our view: a self-directed IRA earns its extra fees only when the alternative asset carries a genuine risk-adjusted return advantage or a genuine diversification benefit that the accountholder is qualified to evaluate. A retiree who understands real estate and has been landlording for 20 years is a plausible SDIRA candidate. A retiree who saw a promoter’s ad for private mortgage notes yielding 12 percent is not.

For precious metals, the case is narrower and more defensible. A 5 to 15 percent allocation of retirement assets to physical bullion, held at a qualified depository through a self-directed custodian, is a diversification play against dollar-denominated financial assets.

Gold has held purchasing power across the major inflationary periods of the last 50 years, though it does not produce income. The trade-off is clear: no dividend, no interest, and the SDIRA fee stack, in exchange for an asset uncorrelated with the equity portion of the portfolio.

For a couple thinking about the next generation, a Roth SDIRA holding metals inherits cleaner than a taxable brokerage account of gold ETFs. The metals sit inside the tax wrapper, appraised at FMV on the date of death, and pass to a spouse rollover-eligible or to an heir subject to the 10-year distribution rule under SECURE 2.0.

Your next step

Three of 27+ gold IRA dealers reviewed by OPRS make the 2026 trusted list. If a precious metals SDIRA is on the table for you, the dealer is the piece that decides whether the whole exercise is worth it.

Custodian and depository are commodity choices; the dealer’s premium schedule and educational transparency are not. Get the free 2026 Gold IRA Guide from our top-rated partner Augusta Precious Metals, or compare it against the full OPRS dealer shortlist if you prefer to see the alternatives first.

OPRS earns a referral fee if you open an account through this Augusta link. The fee does not affect Augusta’s placement here, which is based on OPRS’s own dealer review.

What Is a Self-Directed IRA and How To Set It Up?