A Bird in the Hand is Worth Two in the Vault

Guest Post by Will Lehr

You can store your retirement account gold & silver under your pillow? Then why store anything precious outside of your control?

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As I peruse my favorite alternative media sites bringing myself up to speed on the real news, I can’t help but wonder how people still give any credit to the mainstream talking heads and their blatant lies and misinformation. The alternative media is somewhat of an open source independent, free market fountainhead. It is controlled by no one, yet supported and vetted by the community of the free minded. However, these journalists, bloggers, and truth tellers must make a living like everyone else. When donations are sparse, advertising becomes a viable option.

Due to my extensive Internet searches regarding retirement accounts and precious metals I am often targeted with ads about precious metals IRAs. Unfortunately, these precious metals IRAs are a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Many of these companies would have us believe that a gold IRA or silver IRA will help protect our assets from a financial implosion. These accounts involve a 3rd party trustee, a depository or vault, where your precious metals are stored, on behalf of your retirement account. These depositories hold registered and certified bullion, and are often also holders of COMEX bullion. I would argue that these are not the safest storage methods. You may as well own paper gold and silver and leave the metal deposits with John Corzine. For more information regarding the risks of depository holdings click here.

The good news: there is a solution to the possession challenge inherent in retirement accounts, the IRA LLC. Unfortunately, few even know it exist. Even most experts in the field of precious metals don’t know about it. Most hard money advocates hear the words IRA and metals and immediately assume involvement of a 3rd party storage trustee. This is how we have been conditioned, to believe that we cannot hold our IRA assets, that we are not in control, that we must rely on brokers and bankers- Not true! A retirement account, next to a home, is the average American’s largest asset in his or her lifetime. To leave it unprotected is an unnecessary risk. To leave it in the control of 3rd parties is negligent.

Some believe the only way to take control of retirement assets is to withdraw or cash out, often paying exorbitant taxes and penalties. I would argue that defunding even a relatively small IRA could have harmful ramifications. In this article I give an example of a $100k IRA cash out. Depending on one’s tax bracket you can see how even a $30k cash out could have significant taxes and penalties, making the setup cost of the IRA LLC a viable option to get your hands on the most metal possible. Of course, at some point (currently age 70 ½) you will be forced to take taxable distributions from your IRA LLC. Yes, you can literally pull out those shiny gold, silver, or platinum eagle coins as IRA distributions years later. Yes, it will be a taxable distribution, but pulling out $5,000 value in silver per year is a lighter blow to your taxable income than cashing out a full $30,000+ IRA.

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Physical gold & silver in hand is not the only asset class with which to use the IRA LLC. To clarify, one can invest in almost anything he or she wants under this structure, and is able to do so with more flexibility, control, and options. Clearly, an individual must adhere to guidelines set forth by the IRS as there are a handful of prohibited transactions within retirement accounts. We walk each client carefully through these guidelines. We provide an extensive amount of information on the subject to our clients throughout the process, all of which back up the structural investment framework of the IRA LLC. This includes legal affidavits, concrete do’s and don’t’s, tax code analysis, court cases, and IRS field advisory statements. All of this information is available to the public on a single web page found here.

There should be no concern about the IRS considering this an example of ‘hiding’ assets. As manager of the LLC the individual is the fiduciary of the assets owned by the LLC. He or she is in complete control of the storage of said assets. Our favorite three-letter regulatory bodies are not alerted when one executes this process. All they know is that John Doe has rolled his IRA, SEP, Simple or 401k over to a self-directed IRA platform with one of the largest and oldest IRS-compliant custodians in the self-directed marketplace. In the event of an IRS audit, the individual is responsible to furnish the assets of the LLC. That’s when Mr. Doe has to dig a hole in the ground and knock the dust off those IRA LLC owned coins and prove he has not spent or otherwise personally used those assets. The IRS does not know you hold coins in your hand unless you are audited, and again we are not hiding anything, and certainly not advertising it. The only reporting requirement is an annual valuation of the LLC assets (dollar amount) to the custodian as they update their total assets under management.

In the end, this is all about control and freedom of choice. Our goal is to provide a potential escape hatch for clients. Legally, as a firm we can never endorse non-compliance. That being said, if some mid- to late- 1930s Germany draconian measures begin to show face, regardless if they threaten gun rights, metals, retirement accounts, or personal freedoms, our goal is for our clients to have a choice, and assets within 50 feet of the client’s possession, provides that liberty. As we occasionally tell clients, we try to protect you from everyone, except yourself.

Will Lehr

PA00007-560-x-110-BANNER-vA1

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1 Comment
AWD
AWD
March 31, 2014 3:09 pm

Two in with your hand is worth one in the bush