In general, you have to pay taxes when you sell gold if you make a profit. According to the IRS, precious metals such as gold and silver are considered capital assets and financial gains from their sale are considered taxable income. Silver ingots, ingots and coins are normally taxed as collectibles and not as capital gains. This causes all profitable sales to reach a tax rate of 28 percent, which is much higher than the long-term capital gains rate.
The current rules for yield silver taxes due to the IRS set a maximum rate of 28%, but depending on your tax bracket it may be much lower. Silver bars are capital assets just like other investments. Unless you have invested with a tax-deferred account, such as an IRA, you must report investment gains to the Internal Revenue Service when you sell silver ingots or other forms of precious metals. However, the IRS treats capital gains from the sale of precious metals differently than capital gains in most other capital asset sales.
To determine the tax consequences of selling silver ingots, you need to consider how long you owned the metal. If you sold the silver one year or less from the day you bought it, any profit is short-term and is taxed as ordinary income. If you held the ingots for more than a year, this is a long-term capital gain and your maximum tax rate is 15 percent. Use a loss to first offset similar gains.
That is, to compensate long-term gains with long-term losses and short-term gains with short-term losses. If the losses fully offset the gains, you can use any remaining to offset other income. This includes coins and ingots weighing 1 kilogram or 1000 troy ounces respectively, along with any gold or silver item containing more than 50% pure gold or silver. You only pay taxes when you sell your gold for cash, not when you buy more gold with that money.
If you use an IRA or other tax-deferred account to invest in silver bullion, selling it usually has no tax consequences, since all IRA funds are exempt from tax until withdrawn. Both silver and gold are popular hedges against dollar instability, although silver has a much lower price per ounce than gold.
