They had possession of their IRA assets which makes it a taxable withdrawal.
This.
It's not that they had the gold, it's that they used 401k money to buy and take physical delivery of the gold, which this judge ruled as a withdrawal from the 401K.
So they're liable for taxes and penalties in the withdraw. 401K withdrawals are treated as ordinary income and taxed at the taxpayer's current income tax bracket rate, IIRC. In any case, $411,000 of income will put you at the top rage.
The only bright side is hopefully the gold went up enough in value to cover some of the taxes.
“ They had possession of their IRA assets which makes it a taxable withdrawal.”
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Yep. I feel sorry for them but they did violate the clearly spelled out rules. It looks like they thought they could “finesse” it to avoid a violation but they should have simply listened to the cautions about how to LEGALLY include things such as gold and Bitcoin in your retirement accounts.
> They had possession of their IRA assets which makes it a taxable withdrawal. <
I think that’s the key point here. It doesn’t matter if it was gold or potatoes. In a situation like this, a person could sell off his IRA assets secretly and so avoid paying any penalties or taxes.
Having said that, it seems like the couple here had no ill intent. So if they sold nothing off, give ‘em a slap on the wrist and then order them to set things up according to the law.
If all the declared value coins were accounted for then a simple fine for not storing the coins with a registered fiduciary would have been sufficient.
There appears to be no attempt to evade accountability. The law judge just destroyed their retirement assets and most likely made them paupers because he wanted to make an example of them.
It aint Exxon trying to evade taxes on a couple billion. It’s ordinary people trying to use their assets to get a better return.
Exactly right. It's amazing, based on the knee-jerk comments here, how many people are clueless with respect to that fact.