Gold IRA Depository Rules: What “IRS-Approved” Actually Means (and How to Verify Yours)

A gold IRA depository is the vault company that physically holds the coins and bars your IRA owns. You will probably never open an account with it, never choose it, and never see its price list. Your custodian — the trustee of the account — contracts with the depository, and the dealer who sold you the metal usually arranged that relationship before you signed anything.

The phrase every sales script uses, “IRS-approved depository,” is marketing shorthand rather than a legal category. Federal law regulates the trustee of your account, not the vault. We looked for a list of IRS-approved depositories on October 30, 2026 and found none published on IRS.gov. The list the IRS does publish is a different thing: approved nonbank trustees and custodians, approved under Treasury Regulation 1.408-2(e).

So the useful questions are not “is this depository IRS-approved?” They are: who is the trustee of my account, does that entity qualify, and can it prove my metal is where it says it is?

Disclosure: YourGoldIRAGuide is reader-supported. We earn commissions from some of the companies whose reviews we link to, including the two review pages at the end of this article. That does not change what we report. Every changeable figure below is cited to the source we read and dated to the day we checked it; where we could not verify something, we say so.

The three companies in every gold IRA, and which one the law cares about

• The dealer sells you the metal and earns a spread on it. The CFTC and FINRA state the structure plainly in their joint advisory, “10 Things to Ask Before Buying Physical Gold, Silver, or Other Metals”: “A dealer will always sell metal above the spot price and buy it back below the spot price,” and “Retail metal dealers are not regulated at the federal level” (no publication date shown; checked October 30, 2026).
• The custodian or trustee holds the account, keeps the records and files the tax forms. It is the entity federal law regulates — and, where it is not a bank, the entity the IRS approves.
• The depository stores the metal and reports its holdings to the custodian. It is a vendor to your custodian, not a party you contract with.

One phone call usually sets up all three at once, which is why the roles blur.

What federal law actually requires

Start with the statute. Internal Revenue Code 408(m)(1) treats an IRA’s acquisition of a collectible as a distribution equal to its cost, and 408(m)(2) includes any metal or gem, stamps and coins in the definition. Section 408(m)(3) carves out certain U.S. gold, silver and platinum coins described in 31 U.S.C. 5112, any coin issued under the laws of a state, and gold, silver, platinum or palladium bullion meeting the minimum fineness required for a contract of sale on a commodity futures exchange — but the bullion exclusion applies only if the bullion is in the physical possession of the trustee described in 408(a) (26 U.S.C. 408, checked October 27, 2026).

The IRS’s own Issue Snapshot on investments in collectibles in individually directed accounts states the test in one line: bullion “of a certain fineness” qualifies “if a bank or approved non-bank trustee keeps physical possession of it” (page last reviewed or updated July 3, 2026; checked October 30, 2026). It describes no other custody arrangement and states no purity percentage of its own, referring readers back to IRC 408(m)(3). A purity figure quoted to you as “the IRS rule” therefore traces to futures-market deliverable standards, not to a printed IRS percentage.

Who may be that trustee? IRS Publication 590-A (for use in preparing 2025 returns; checked October 30, 2026) states the trustee or custodian must be a bank, a federally insured credit union, a savings and loan association, or an entity approved by the IRS. “Bank” is defined in IRC 408(n): a bank under IRC 581, an insured credit union, or a corporation that, under the laws of its state of incorporation, is subject to supervision and examination by the Commissioner of Banking or an equivalent officer. A state-supervised trust company qualifies through that third category; the statute does not name trust companies as such.

The list the IRS publishes, and the one it does not

The IRS page on approved nonbank trustees and custodians describes how an entity gets on it: a non-bank may apply in writing, must demonstrate that the requirements of Treasury Regulation 1.408-2(e) will be met, and receives approval by written notice. The published file is a PDF titled “Nonbank trustees list as of April 1, 2026” (IRS page last reviewed or updated June 28, 2026; checked October 30, 2026).

We are deliberately not telling you which companies appear on it. Both PDF URLs we tried on October 30, 2026 returned HTTP 404, so we did not read the document, and naming entries from search snippets is the secondhand sourcing this topic already drowns in. Open the PDF from the IRS page above and search it for the entity named on your account statement.

No approved-depository list appears on IRS.gov, and the list the IRS does publish covers trustees and custodians. Combined with the Issue Snapshot’s framing, the sensible reading is that there is no vault approval to look up — a reasoned conclusion from those two IRS pages rather than an absolute, since research cannot prove a universal negative. If a dealer calls a depository “IRS-approved,” the burden is on them to show where that approval is recorded.

One wrinkle explains the confusion: a vault operator can itself hold trustee approval. The Texas Bullion Depository’s IRA storage page states that its operator, Lone Star Tangible Assets LP, “received IRS approval as a nonbank trustee in 2023” (the depository’s own statement; checked October 30, 2026), and a Texas Comptroller news release dated June 12, 2025 puts “IRS-Approved Operator” in its headline while the body never explains what that approval involves. That approval, where it exists, is trustee approval under 1.408-2(e) — not a certification of a building.

What “approved” actually demands: inside Treasury Regulation 1.408-2(e)

Competing articles cite 1.408-2(e) and move on. Its contents tell you what a non-bank trustee had to prove. All quotations below are from 26 C.F.R. 1.408-2, checked October 30, 2026.

• Money. An initial applicant must show “a net worth of not less than $250,000.” To accept each new account, net worth must exceed the greater of $100,000 or 4% of assets held in its fiduciary accounts (2% for a passive trustee), and ongoing net worth must stay above the greater of $50,000 or 2% of fiduciary assets (1% for a passive trustee).
• Audits. The regulation requires “detailed audits of the fiduciary books and records to be made by a qualified public accountant.”
• Bonding. “All employees taking part in the performance of the applicant’s fiduciary duties will be adequately bonded.”
• Structure. The applicant must “maintain a separate trust division under the immediate supervision of an individual” and “must keep its fiduciary records separate and distinct from other records.” Owners or directors are responsible for “the proper exercise of fiduciary powers.”
• Competence. The applicant needs “fiduciary experience or expertise sufficient to ensure that it will be able to perform its fiduciary duties,” plus “experience and competence with respect to accounting for the interests of a large number of individuals.”

Then comes the sentence that is the actual regulatory root of depository storage, and it is a single clause: “Assets of accounts requiring safekeeping will be deposited in an adequate vault.” The regulation also requires a permanent record of deposits and withdrawals. It does not name depositories, set security specifications or require any particular vault company.

So the depository requirement comes from a trustee-possession rule in the statute and an “adequate vault” standard in the regulation — not from an approval program for vaults.

The commingling provision, and an open question

The same subsection contains this: “the investments of each account will not be commingled with any other property,” with stated exceptions for investments pooled in a common investment fund under paragraph (e)(5)(vi) and for accounts under section 408(q) established on or after August 1, 2003.

Our editorial reading, labeled as such: that provision governs how a nonbank trustee handles and accounts for each account’s investments. We found no authority deciding whether depository-level pooled or “commingled” bullion storage interacts with it, and we are not telling you commingled storage is illegal or disqualifying, because nothing we read supports that. But the text exists and it is fair to raise. If your metal will sit in a pooled arrangement, ask your custodian in writing how its storage arrangement satisfies 1.408-2(e)(5)(v)(A). A custodian that can answer in a sentence has thought about it.

When the possession chain breaks: McNulty, with the numbers

The depository exists because personal possession destroys the tax treatment. The leading case on it is McNulty, 157 T.C. No. 10 (2021). The figures and quotations below come from the AICPA’s Journal of Accountancy reporting on the opinion (checked October 30, 2026); we did not read the opinion itself and state no decision date.

As reported, the Tax Court found taxable distributions equal to the cost of the coins: $374,000 in 2015, producing a deficiency of $250,558, and $37,380 in 2016, producing a deficiency of $18,094. The IRS proposed accuracy-related penalties under section 6662 and the court upheld them. The court held that physical custody of American Eagle coins gave the taxpayer “unfettered control,” which caused the distributions; ownership by an LLC did not change that, and it did not matter that she never used the coins, because she was free to do so. The opinion stated that “[p]ersonal control over the IRA assets by the IRA owner is against the very nature of an IRA” and warned that her position was “ripe for abuse.” She also argued that the trustee-possession requirement applies only to bullion under 408(m)(3)(B), not to coins under (m)(3)(A); the court rejected that argument.

That is the whole case for a vault. The structures marketed as “home storage” or “checkbook IRA” gold accounts are the arrangement McNulty tested, and an LLC in the middle did not save it; we cover how the pitch works in home storage gold IRA scams, and the difference between IRA metal and metal you simply own in gold IRA vs physical gold. If you want metal in a safe at home, buy it outside the IRA with after-tax money, where no possession rule applies.

What about a bank safe deposit box?

A box you rent in your own name at a bank is your box. The test under IRC 408(m)(3) is physical possession by the trustee described in 408(a), and the IRS Issue Snapshot frames it the same way: possession by a bank or approved non-bank trustee. A key in your pocket is control, which is what McNulty found fatal. One arrangement is genuinely different: where a bank is itself the IRA trustee and holds the metal in its own vault under its own records, possession sits with the trustee rather than with you. Get in writing which of those two you have.

Segregated, allocated, commingled: what the labels actually mean

These three terms are industry vocabulary, not legal definitions — no statute or regulation we read defines them. As the trade generally uses them:

• Segregated: your specific items are kept physically apart from other customers’ metal and identified to your account.
• Allocated: specific items are assigned to your account on the depository’s books, though they may sit within shared vault space.
• Commingled or pooled: metal of the same type is stored together and your entitlement is a book-entry claim on the pool, so you may receive equivalent items rather than the exact pieces you bought.

The problem is visible in the operators’ own language. Delaware Depository’s IRA services page states: “All bullion is fully allocated to the account holder and held off-balance sheet,” and never uses “segregated” or “non-segregated.” The Texas Bullion Depository’s IRA storage page states: “Your precious metals are stored separately, never commingled,” and mentions no pooled option (both checked October 30, 2026). Two reputable operators, two vocabularies, and neither maps onto the three-way split a dealer describes on the phone. So do not accept a label. Ask what you receive back on a withdrawal: the exact serial-numbered bars you bought, or equivalent metal of the same type and weight.

You will not arrange this with the vault either. Segregated storage is typically an election made through your custodian: The Entrust Group hosts a PDF titled “Delaware Depository Services Company (DDSC) Segregate Storage Election Form,” which establishes that at least one custodian treats segregated storage at that depository as an opt-in requiring a signed form (document located October 30, 2026; we could not extract its text, so we publish none of its terms). If nobody handed you an election form, you did not elect anything — ask which default applies.

The depositories you are likely to hear named, and what they publish

Six names come up repeatedly in gold IRA sales conversations and in the comparison pages ranking for this search: Delaware Depository, Brink’s Global Services, International Depository Services, CNT Depository, A-Mark’s logistics operation and the state-run Texas Bullion Depository. We are not ranking them, and we did not verify which is most widely used.

The most data-rich comparison page on the live results carries per-depository ratings and fee figures explicitly labeled “as of August 2024,” and discloses paid compensation for placement (LendEDU, checked October 30, 2026). Two-year-old storage rates on an advertising-funded page are not a basis for telling retirees which vault is best, and a second competing article’s fee ranges contradict that page outright. What we can show is what each operator publishes in its own name.

Sources for the table: delawaredepository.com/ira-services, delawaredepository.com and texasbulliondepository.gov/ira-storage, all checked October 30, 2026. Delaware Depository also claims that “[t]he majority of IRA custodians choose Delaware Depository IRA services to securely store their customers’ IRA assets” — a company claim we did not verify. The Texas Comptroller’s June 12, 2025 release adds that the depository became ready to hold precious metal IRA assets in 2025 in collaboration with Equity Trust. One thing stands out across the table: neither operator publishes an insurance coverage limit.

We also checked three of the other names on October 30, 2026, looking only for what each publishes itself — an official site, its locations, and any IRA storage price or insurance limit. Brink’s Global Services (brinksglobal.com) publishes no US vault locations, only an aggregate of 1,300 facilities across 52 operating countries — a count the same homepage contradicts elsewhere, where it says “Operations in 100 Countries.” Its precious metals page (brinksglobal.com/precious-metals, checked October 30, 2026) describes Private Client Storage, secure vaults and bonded warehouses with “all-risk protection,” but names no US vault address, publishes no rate and states no coverage limit. International Depository Services publishes its own site at internationaldepositoryservices.com (checked October 30, 2026), where it lists three depositories — New Castle, Delaware, just outside Wilmington; Dallas, Texas; and Mississauga, Ontario — and names Lloyd’s of London as its insurer while publishing no coverage limit, no storage rates and no minimums. For CNT Depository we could not complete the check: the domain we tried, cnt-inc.com, returns a “Launching Soon” placeholder with no address and no mention of depository or IRA storage, and we located no official CNT Depository site, so we publish nothing about its locations, pricing or insurance. If a dealer names it, ask for the operator’s legal entity name, the exact vault address, and its current fee schedule in writing.

Who actually sets your storage fee

A government-operated depository says it outright. The Texas Bullion Depository’s IRA storage page states: “Storage fees for IRA assets are typically negotiated between the custodian, the gold dealer and the depository contractor.” It adds: “The fees for standard storage shown on this website may not apply” (checked October 30, 2026).

Read that as an investor. A state agency is telling you the price of storing your retirement metal is set in a negotiation among three parties, and you are not one of them. That is what this depository states about its own arrangement; we are not generalizing it to every operator as a verified fact.

You therefore cannot price-shop storage directly: the number on your statement is whatever your custodian and dealer arranged, with no public benchmark to compare it against. Third-party comparison pages describe two pricing shapes — a percentage of account value with an annual minimum, or a flat annual amount, with segregated priced above pooled — but they disagree with each other on the rates, and none traces its figures to a depository document. Treat the shape as a prompt for your question, not as a quote.

What you can do is make the charge legible. The CFTC and FINRA advisory tells buyers to ask, in its own words, “What fees and commissions will I be charged?” and “What other costs should I consider?” Put those in email, and add one more: is the storage charge on my statement the depository’s charge passed through unchanged, or does it include an amount retained by the custodian or dealer? For how these charges stack up alongside setup and administration costs, see our breakdowns of gold IRA custodian fees and gold IRA rollover fees.

One piece of industry context on why written disclosure matters, concerning a different company entirely — this is not an allegation about any depository or firm named above. In CFTC Release No. 8812-23, dated October 25, 2023 (checked October 30, 2026), a consent order against Safeguard Metals LLC and Jeffrey Ikahn found that customers paid an average markup of 71% while the customer agreement stated a maximum markup of 23% on silver coins. A written number you can hold someone to is worth more than a verbal assurance.

Insurance and audits: what “fully insured and audited” leaves out

“Insured by Lloyd’s of London” appears on both depositories’ pages, and neither publishes a coverage amount. Naming a carrier tells you a policy exists, not the limit, the sublimits, the exclusions or who is the named insured — so ask whether the policy is held by the depository or by your custodian, whether IRA account holders are named or merely benefit from a commercial policy, and what the aggregate limit is relative to the total metal in the building.

On audits, note the wording. Delaware Depository’s homepage states it is a “SSAE18 – SOC1 Type1 audited organization.” In standard attestation terminology, a Type I report addresses the design of controls at a point in time, while a Type II also tests whether those controls operated effectively over a period. That is not a criticism of any company; it is simply the question to ask: is a SOC 1 Type II report available on request? The Texas depository’s disclosure is different in kind — “regular audits by a representative from the Comptroller’s office,” with no results, dates or scope published.

Finally, the thing nobody tells a new gold IRA owner: your custodian is not vetting any of this for you. The SEC’s “Investor Alert: Self-Directed IRAs and the Risk of Fraud” (Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, most current version dated February 2023; sec.gov, checked October 30, 2026) explains that custodians do not sell products or give advice, do not evaluate investments or promoters, do not verify financial information, and are responsible only for holding and administering assets — and that most custodial agreements disclaim responsibility for investment performance. Using a legitimate custodian does not make an investment legitimate, and the alert warns that fraudsters often imply custodians investigate what they hold. For what happens when a company in the chain fails, see what happens if your gold IRA company goes bankrupt.

The verification script

Three calls, written answers, about an hour of your time.

Ask your custodian (and get it in email):

1. What is the exact legal name of the trustee or custodian of my account, and is it a bank, a federally insured credit union, or an IRS-approved nonbank trustee? If the last, confirm it appears on the IRS list current as of April 1, 2026.
2. Which depository holds my metal, at which specific location?
3. Which storage model applies in your contractual language — not “segregated” as a sales word, but what I receive back on a distribution: the same items, or equivalent metal?
4. Is a storage election form on file for my account? Send me a copy. If none exists, which default applied and who chose it?
5. How does your storage arrangement satisfy the non-commingling provision in Treasury Regulation 1.408-2(e)(5)(v)(A)?
6. Send the current fee schedule as a dated document, including the storage charge and whether it is passed through unchanged.

Our longer walkthrough of vetting the trustee entity is in how to verify a gold IRA custodian, and we compare the main players in best gold IRA custodians.

Ask the depository (through your custodian if it will not speak to you directly):

1. What is the insurance coverage limit for the location holding my metal, and who is the named insured?
2. Is a SOC 1 Type II report available, and what period does it cover?
3. How is my holding identified on your records — by account, by serial number, or as a claim on a pool?
4. Is the metal held off your balance sheet, and what documentation shows that?

Ask the dealer:

1. Who negotiated the storage rate on my account, and what does the depository charge my custodian?
2. What is your markup over spot on each item, in writing, and what would you pay me if I sold it back tomorrow? (The CFTC and FINRA advisory tells buyers to ask that second question.)

Keep permanently: the statement naming the depository and location, the storage election form, the dated fee schedule, and the annual Form 5498 your custodian files. Box 5 reports the fair market value of the account as of December 31; the form is due to the IRS by May 31 of the following year, the fair market value statement to you by February 1, and the RMD statement by January 31 (IRS instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498, checked October 27, 2026).

Red flags: any “home storage,” “checkbook” or LLC structure for IRA metal; refusal to name the depository or location; no written fee schedule with an effective date; “IRS-approved” used as a credential with nothing behind it; and a storage charge you cannot trace to a published or contractual rate.

What your storage setup costs you on the way out

Storage decisions look cheap until you need money out, because metal is not cash. One precious metals custodian, GoldStar Trust, states the mechanics on its required minimum distribution page (checked October 27, 2026): “Cash is not currently available in the account and a liquidation must be completed to meet the RMD,” and where assets are not liquid, “you may have to take an in-kind distribution.” Two lines deserve a highlighter: “Fees must be paid prior to the processing of the distribution request,” and “[f]ees are not included in the total amount needed to satisfy your RMD.” Your storage and administration charges come out first and do not count toward the withdrawal the IRS requires, which for a traditional IRA generally must begin at age 73 (IRS RMD FAQs, checked October 27, 2026). We review that custodian separately in our GoldStar Trust Company review and cite it here as an illustration, not a recommendation.

If you take metal rather than cash, the distribution is reported at fair market value on the date of distribution, and a traditional IRA distribution of assets without a readily available fair market value is coded K in box 7a of Form 1099-R (IRS instructions, checked October 27, 2026). Once the metal is yours personally, net capital gains from selling collectibles such as coins are taxed at a maximum 28% rate (IRS Topic 409, checked October 27, 2026; the page does not name gold or bullion specifically) — reason enough to involve a tax professional before requesting a distribution.

The bottom line

Four things actually protect you, and none of them is the phrase “IRS-approved depository”: a trustee that qualifies as a bank or an IRS-approved nonbank trustee, a named depository and location on your statement, a written fee schedule with an effective date, and a storage arrangement whose terms you can read.

Because you do not choose the vault and cannot price storage directly — a state-run depository says so in its own words — the company you sign with is the only real lever you control. If you are weighing providers, read our full Goldco review for fees, disclosures and tradeoffs, and our Augusta Precious Metals review if one-on-one education is what you want — note that its account minimum is higher than most, and the review carries the current figure. If you are earlier in the process, our step-by-step guide to transferring an IRA to physical gold covers the paperwork order.

A gold IRA is not right for everyone. Metal produces no income, carries dealer spreads on the way in and out, costs money every year to store, and concentrates risk in a single asset. Suitability is personal. Before moving retirement money, consider a fiduciary adviser who does not earn a commission on the product and a tax professional who will look at your own return.