Is it worth it to own precious metal ETFs inside a retirement account?
Is it worth it to buy precious metal (e.g. gold and silver) ETFs inside a retirement account (e.g. Accurately accounting for taxes on precious metal (e.g. gold and silver) ETFs is laborious. The reason is that ETFs (e.g. GLD) collect expenses from the investor by selling fractional shares on a month-by-month basis -- taxable transactions. To make things more complicated, (1) each of these sales includes shares from different tax lots (different cost basis), and (2) some sales incur short-term capital gains tax and some incur long-term capital gains tax. Here is an excerpt from the GLD prospectus on the trust's tax treatment (another ETF has an excerpt with similar language):