Gold is 21% off its high. Your rate on it is still 28%.

This article first appeared in The Nest Egg, my daily email, on 2026-09-14. Read the original issue. It is educational, not a recommendation for you. The household in it is a hypothetical example, and market figures are as of the date shown and will have changed.

Every figure below names its document. Every calculation is shown. Nothing here is a forecast.

Good morning. The tape has been shut since Friday afternoon, so the first honest price you see today arrives at 9:30 and everything before it is somebody’s opinion. No rush on that.

In today’s issue

The tape. Every index closed green on Friday and the VIX gave back 11.21%. Two minutes.

The 28% almost nobody prices in. Gains on a physically backed gold fund are not taxed at 15% or 20%. They are taxed at your ordinary rate, capped at 28%, plus the 3.8% surtax. On a $160,000 gain that is $20,800 more than the identical gain in a stock fund, and the arithmetic is below, line by line. Four minutes.

Where gold actually belongs. The same gain costs $50,880 in a taxable account, $53,527 in a rollover IRA, and nothing at all in a Roth. The standard asset location rule runs backwards for this one asset. Two minutes.

One more thing. The IRS page most people use to check this is still printing 2025 numbers. One minute.

The tape

Closing levels and session changes, CNBC US markets, September 11, 2026. Gold and WTI crude are front-month futures settlements.

The story

Gold settled Friday at $4,408.90 on the December COMEX contract, up 1.17% on the day, according to CNBC exchange data for September 11, 2026.

That single number is a winner and a loser at the same time. Measured from the 52-week low of $3,651.00 set on September 11, 2025, gold is up 20.8% in one year. Measured from the 52-week high of $5,586.20 set on January 29, 2026, it is down 21.1%.

The tax code does not care which of those two dates moved you. It cares about one thing that has nothing to do with price: what the asset is made of.

Section 1(h)(5) of the Internal Revenue Code defines collectibles gain by pointing at section 408(m), and 408(m)(2)(C) says a collectible includes “any metal or gem.” The cross reference is written to apply without regard to paragraph (3), which is the paragraph that normally exempts bullion. Translated: for rate purposes, bullion is a collectible.

A physically backed gold fund is a grantor trust. The SPDR Gold Trust says so in its own 2025 Grantor Trust Tax Reporting Statement, published January 2026: shareholders “will be treated, for U.S. federal income tax purposes, as if they directly owned a pro rata share of the underlying assets.” You do not own a fund. You own gold, and you are taxed on gold.

Section 1(h)(1)(F) then caps that gain at 28%. The 2025 Instructions for Schedule D, the most recent the IRS has published, route it to line 18 through a page called the 28% Rate Gain Worksheet, and name the property on it as “metals (such as gold, silver, and platinum bullion).” That worksheet is where most tax software does this quietly, without ever showing you the rate it used.

The position

A married couple, 68 and 66, filing jointly. $2,400,000 across a joint taxable account, his rollover IRA and a small Roth.

In 2019 they put 5% into a physically backed gold fund. That was $120,000, and it sits in the taxable account. It is worth $360,000 today, which makes it 15% of the portfolio against a written policy of 5%.

Their 2026 taxable income before any sale is $430,000, from Social Security, his required distribution, dividends and interest on a ladder yielding near 5%. Under Revenue Procedure 2025-32, published October 2025, that puts them in the 32% ordinary bracket, which runs from $403,550 to $512,450 on a joint return.

Rebalancing back to 5% means selling $240,000 of the sleeve. Basis is one third of market value, so basis on that sale is $80,000 and the gain is $160,000.

The arithmetic

Every figure below is published. Nothing is projected.

If that gain came from a broad stock fund. Their taxable income with the gain is $430,000 plus $160,000, or $590,000. Revenue Procedure 2025-32 puts the top of the 15% capital gains band at $613,700 for a joint return in 2026, so the whole gain stays at 15%.

$160,000 x 15% = $24,000 $160,000 x 3.8% = $6,080 Total $30,080, an effective 18.8%.

Because it came from a gold fund. Collectibles gain is taxed at the ordinary rate, capped at 28%. Their ordinary rate on this money is 32%, then 35% above $512,450. Both sit above the cap, so the entire gain takes 28%.

$160,000 x 28% = $44,800 $160,000 x 3.8% = $6,080 Total $50,880, an effective 31.8%.

The difference is $20,800. Same couple, same day, same $160,000. Thirteen cents on every dollar of gain, and the only variable that changed is that the asset is a metal.

If the gold had been in the rollover IRA instead. It comes out as ordinary income with no 28% ceiling above it. Stacked on $430,000: $82,450 of it at 32% is $26,384, and the remaining $77,550 at 35% is $27,142.50. Total $53,526.50, an effective 33.5%. No surtax, because section 1411(c)(5) excludes IRA distributions from net investment income. It is still the most expensive of the three.

If it had been in the Roth. Zero.

2026 rates per Revenue Procedure 2025-32. Hypothetical illustration of published rates, built to show arithmetic. Not a projection of any reader’s result.

What the four of them would say

The portfolio manager. A 5% policy weight that is now 15% is a drift problem, not a gold opinion. Whether you believe the 20.8% one-year gain or the 21.1% drawdown from January, neither number tells you the right weight. The band does.

The CPA. 28% is a ceiling, not a rate, and that cuts both ways. Notice also that a collectibles loss reduces 28-percent rate gain first, under section 1(h)(4)(B)(i). A dollar of gold loss shelters income taxed at 31.8% here while a dollar of stock loss shelters income taxed at 18.8%, which makes the gold loss worth 69% more per dollar against this particular gain.

The financial planner. The usual rule puts your highest expected return in the Roth and your tax-inefficient income in the traditional IRA. For gold specifically that ordering inverts, because ordinary rates have no 28% ceiling: $53,527 in the rollover, $50,880 in taxable, $0 in the Roth.

The estate attorney. Section 1014 steps up basis at death on the decedent’s share, and on the entire position in a community property state. Nobody ever pays 28% on the portion that steps up, which means the case for selling a large gold position is a portfolio case and not a tax one.

One more thing

IRS Topic 409 is where most people land when they search for the collectibles rate, and it states the 28% maximum correctly.

It also still carries the capital gains breakpoints for taxable years beginning in 2025. The 2026 figures live in Revenue Procedure 2025-32, and the gap is not cosmetic: the 15% band for a joint return tops out at $613,700 in 2026, which is the exact line keeping this couple’s stock-fund gain at 15% instead of 20%.

Check our math against Topic 409 and you will get a different answer than we did. The page is the reason, not the math. That is why every figure in this letter carries the document it came from.

Tomorrow

The $250,000 surtax threshold has not moved one dollar since 2013, because section 1411(b) wrote the number into the statute instead of indexing it. We will show you what that has quietly done to a portfolio throwing off $80,000 a year.

Sources

Market levels, close of September 11, 2026: CNBC US markets. Collectibles gain and the 28% cap: 26 U.S.C. 1(h). Definition of a collectible: 26 U.S.C. 408(m). The 3.8% surtax and its fixed thresholds: 26 U.S.C. 1411. IRS Topic 409. IRS Topic 559. IRS Instructions for Schedule D, 28% Rate Gain Worksheet. Revenue Procedure 2025-32. SPDR Gold Trust 2025 Grantor Trust Tax Reporting Statement.

The conversation a portfolio manager, a CPA, a financial planner and an estate attorney would have about your money if the four of them were ever in the same room. None of them ever talk to each other. This is that room, every weekday at 6:45am, sized to a portfolio between $500,000 and $5,000,000.

The Nest Egg is educational material published by a registered representative. It is not tax, legal or investment advice, and it is not an offer or solicitation. Every case shown is a hypothetical illustration of published rates, built to demonstrate arithmetic, and is not a projection of any reader’s result. Tax outcomes depend on facts this letter does not know. Consult your own tax and legal advisors before acting.