Sitting on Gold Gains: What You Would Actually Owe If You Sold

At late-August 2026 spot of about $4,650 gold, almost everyone who bought before 2025 is holding a large unrealised gain — and an invisible tax liability alongside it. We compute the actual federal bill for five realistic positions, from a 2023 buyer in the 24% bracket to a November 2025 buyer who has not yet crossed the one-year line.

Published September 16, 2026 · Updated September 26, 2026 · 10 min read

Key Takeaways

• At late-August 2026 spot of about $4,650, a 2023 buyer of 10 oz of gold at $2,000 was sitting on roughly $26,500 of unrealised gain — and would owe about $6,360 in federal tax on it in the 24% bracket, or about $8,427 at the top with the NIIT.
• The rate on a long-term bullion sale is the lower of 28% and your ordinary bracket. In the brackets below 28% that means your full ordinary rate, not the 0% or 15% a long-term stock gain would get; in the brackets above it, the cap holds you at 28% — plus 3.8% NIIT for higher earners.
• The one-year holding line is the single most expensive boundary you control. On a $26,500 gain, selling at 11 months instead of 13 costs a 35%-bracket investor an extra $1,855 in federal tax for no economic difference.
• Every dollar of dealer premium, shipping and sales tax you paid at purchase belongs in your cost basis. Recording only spot systematically overstates your own gain.
• These are computable numbers, not forecasts. Our free tax calculator runs your bracket and holding period; for your own recorded purchases, the "If you sold today" preview in GoldSilverPortfolio Premium estimates the federal tax a sale would add at today's spot price.

The rally that carried gold from roughly $2,624 at the start of 2025 to about $4,650 by late August 2026 did something quietly to nearly every holder of physical metal: it turned modest positions into large unrealised gains, and large unrealised gains into meaningful unrealised tax liabilities. Most investors have a feel for the first number and no idea about the second. This article computes the second — the actual federal bill on five realistic positions — using the same logic as our tax calculator. The rules themselves are covered in our plain-English guide to US tax on precious metals; here we put dollar figures on them. All prices in this article are quoted in US dollars (USD) per troy ounce, and every scenario uses spot levels of roughly $4,650 gold and $69 silver as of late August 2026. Spot moves every day, so treat the figures as worked examples and run your own position at today's price in the calculator.

The Two Facts That Decide Your Bill

For a long-term sale of physical metal — held more than one year — the federal rate is the lower of 28% and your ordinary income bracket, because the IRS treats bullion as a collectible. For a short-term sale, it is simply your ordinary bracket. Higher earners add the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax on top. That is nearly the whole calculation: the rate comes from your bracket and holding period, and the gain comes from your records. Everything below is those two facts applied to positions people actually hold.

Scenario A is the one most long-time readers will recognise: a position built before the rally, now more than doubled. Notice that the famous 28% collectibles rate never appears in it. In the 24% bracket the cap simply does not bind — you pay your ordinary rate, which is what "capped at 28%" actually means. The rule bites in scenario B, where a 35%-bracket investor is capped at 28% but adds the NIIT for a combined 31.8%. Same coins, same gain, a $2,067 larger bill — determined entirely by whose return it lands on.

31.8% The Top Federal Rate on a Long-Term Bullion Gain. The 28% collectibles cap plus the 3.8% Net Investment Income Tax. State income tax, where applicable, comes on top of this — a California top-bracket seller can face a combined marginal rate in the mid-40s.

Scenario E Is the One to Study

The November 2025 buyer in scenario E is holding a $5,500 gain after less than a year — and selling it inside that first year taxes the whole gain at the full 38.8% combined rate, because the collectibles cap only exists for long-term holdings. The same sale made after the position crosses its one-year anniversary would run at 31.8%. On this position that is a $385 difference; on a larger gain the arithmetic scales linearly, and it is worth seeing exactly what the boundary costs at each bracket.

Two things follow from this table. First, the one-year line only matters if your bracket is above 28% — a 24%-bracket investor pays the same rate either side of it. Second, for everyone above that line, the boundary is the cheapest tax planning that exists: it requires no structure, no products and no advice, only knowing each lot's acquisition date. Which is precisely the problem, because most physical holders do not know their acquisition dates lot by lot. A position accumulated across years is a stack of separate tax lots, each with its own clock, and a sale draws from specific lots whether you tracked them or not.

Your Gain Is Only as Real as Your Basis

Every scenario above assumed a clean cost basis, and that assumption does the quiet work. Your basis is not the spot price on the day you bought — it is what you actually paid: the dealer premium, shipping, and any sales tax at purchase all belong in it. Consider 100 oz of silver bought at $23 spot with a typical 12% all-in premium. Recording spot only gives a basis of $2,300 and, at late August's $69 silver, a gain of $4,600; the true basis of $2,576 gives a gain of $4,324. The spot-only record overstates the gain by $276 and the tax by about $77 at the capped rate — on one small position. Across a decade of purchases the systematic error compounds, always in the IRS's favour, never in yours.

An unrealised gain is a fact about the market. The tax on it is a fact about your records.

How to Run Your Own Number

1. List your lots: Each purchase is its own tax lot: quantity, date, and full cost including premium. A sale is matched against specific lots, so the position-level average is not enough.
2. Check each lot against the one-year line: Lots held over a year are long-term (ordinary rate capped at 28%); lots held a year or less are short-term (full ordinary rate). One sale can contain both.
3. Apply your bracket: Long-term rate = the lower of 28% and your ordinary bracket. Add 3.8% NIIT if your income is above the applicable threshold, and remember your state taxes gains separately.
4. Sanity-check with the calculator: Our tax calculator applies exactly this logic to numbers you enter, and shows the same gain across the common vehicles side by side.

You can run any of these scenarios — or your own position — through our free tax calculator, and the free portfolio tracker shows your holdings at their live value, with the gain or loss on each. GoldSilverPortfolio Premium adds an "If you sold today" preview that estimates the federal tax a sale of your own recorded purchases would add at today's spot price, and, for investors with many lots across many years, maintains the lot-level ledger this arithmetic requires and produces Form 8949-ready worksheets from it — computed from your records, intended to be checked by your CPA rather than to replace one.

Sources and Methodology

The rules in this article were checked twice by researchers working independently from the primary texts: on 13 September 2026, before publication, and again in late September 2026. The figures are our own arithmetic at late-August 2026 spot, about $4,650 gold and $69 silver; the starting price of about $2,624 for 2025 is the one used across our earlier articles. Each scenario applies one rate to the whole gain in the stated bracket, as our calculator does; a real return stacks the gain across brackets, which can lower the tax on part of it.

Conflicts of interest: none of the sources has a commercial interest in bullion. GoldSilverPortfolio sells TaxStack, the Premium tool whose “If you sold today” preview this article describes.

Primary sources

• Internal Revenue Service — Revenue Procedure 2025-32 (9 October 2025): the 2026 brackets and capital-gain thresholds, under which the whole 32% bracket falls in the 15% long-term band
• Internal Revenue Service — Publication 550, “Investment Income and Expenses” (2025): bullion is a collectible; the 28% maximum, and the lower ordinary rate where it applies; the holding period
• Internal Revenue Service — Topic no. 409, “Capital gains and losses”: short-term gains taxed as ordinary income
• Internal Revenue Service — “Questions and Answers on the Net Investment Income Tax”: the 3.8% tax and its thresholds, which are not indexed for inflation
• Internal Revenue Service — Publication 551, “Basis of Assets” (Rev. December 2025): cost includes sales tax and freight
• US Code — 26 U.S.C. §§ 1(h), 408(m), 1222 and 1411
• California Franchise Tax Board — 2025 California Tax Rate Schedules and the Behavioral Health Services Tax: a top rate of 12.3%, plus 1% on taxable income over $1,000,000