Buying silver in Ireland

An Irish buyer meets the difference between gold and silver on the invoice long before meeting it on a chart. The same market sets both quotes and the same shelf holds both, yet the two are taxed under entirely different rules. The figures on this page all start from the silver price; that quotation covers the metal and stops there, so it says nothing at all about what the metal ends up costing at an Irish counter.

The line on an Irish silver invoice that gold does not have

Value added tax in Ireland is charged at a standard rate of 23 per cent under section 46(1)(a) of the Value-Added Tax Consolidation Act 2010, and that was the rate in force on 17 August 2026. Every ordinary shape of physical silver attracts it — poured bars, struck bars, privately minted rounds, state-minted bullion coins — and the statute offers none of them a lighter treatment. Nothing in the Act cuts the rate for material bought as an investment, nothing switches the charge off below a given sum, and nothing lets a private buyer claim it back later.

The wording matters more than it looks. Gold is exempt: the supply is inside the charge to VAT and then relieved from it, rather than outside the scope of the tax. The difference is not academic, because an exempt supply blocks the ordinary deduction of input VAT and section 90(6) to (8) VATCA 2010 opens only narrow routes back. Silver never reaches that question at all.

Every rate, provision and threshold on this page is the law of the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland is a separate jurisdiction with its own rules, and nothing here should be read across the border in either direction.

The two platinum group metals land where silver lands rather than where gold does, so the guide to platinum and palladium begins from the same problem. The charge itself is described under VAT on silver.

The definition in section 90 and why no silver item can meet it

The exemption sits in Schedule 1, Part 2, Paragraph 9(1) VATCA 2010 and takes its definition from section 90(1) of the same Act. Set that definition out limb by limb and the point settles itself: each condition is expressed about one particular metal, and silver is not that metal.

The exemption is metal-specific, not investment-specific

What the Oireachtas enacted is relief for one metal, not relief for investing in metals. Two coins of the same diameter and the same year, issued by the same mint in the same series, therefore attract completely different tax simply because of what they are struck from. VATCA 2010 sets out no counterpart provision for silver, and none for platinum or palladium either.

The European Union publishes an annual list of qualifying gold coins in the Official Journal. It is a proof aid rather than a separate ground of exemption, and no silver list exists because there is no silver exemption for one to serve. The mechanics are summarised under the VAT exemption for investment gold.

Gold's exemption carries its own duty: section 90(9) VATCA 2010 obliges the seller to establish and retain the buyer's identity from 15,000 euro per supply or series of linked supplies. That sits inside the investment gold regime and does not travel to silver, a point taken up, along with the separate money laundering rules on cash, in the guide to buying gold in Ireland.

The margin scheme is closed to investment silver

Material written for buyers elsewhere in Europe keeps pointing at the same escape hatch. Several member states let a dealer account for tax on the difference between what a coin cost him and what he sells it for, rather than on the full ticket, and that is the usual reason silver coins undercut silver bars on the continent. Irish law shuts the route off inside the definition of the goods themselves rather than through a later exception.

Section 87(1) VATCA 2010 defines second-hand goods and carves out, in the same breath, "precious metals and precious stones". The carve-out covers silver, gold and platinum, and reaches any goods containing one of them where the consideration does not exceed the open market price of the metal. A plain investment silver coin, priced off the metal, sits squarely inside the exclusion.

The practical consequence is that the continental logic reverses. Coins and bars are taxed identically here, so the choice between them comes back to premium, divisibility and resale rather than to the invoice.

Where numismatic silver parts company with bullion

The exclusion is drawn around metal value, and that is exactly where collector material leaves it. A silver coin bought for its rarity, its year or its condition rather than for the metal in it is a collectors' item, and collectors' items can go through the margin scheme.

Two questions decide which side an item falls on

The statutory hinge in section 87(1) is whether the consideration exceeds the open market price of the metal contained in the item. Alongside it sits the commercial question of what the buyer is actually paying for. A sealed modern one-ounce bullion coin is priced off the metal; a proof coin in original packaging, or a scarce dated issue, usually is not.

The distinction has a second edge for an investor: collector premiums form a separate market with its own liquidity, and they are not recovered merely because the silver price rose. Background under numismatics and collector coins.

What 23 per cent does to a round trip in silver

The tax is not a service fee. No private buyer has ever held a right to deduct it, and whoever buys the metal later is paying for silver, not for a charge settled with Revenue years earlier. The only honest way to see its size is to price the exit at the same time as the entry.

Metal value        = weight in grams / 31.1035 x price per troy ounce
Net price          = metal value x (1 + premium)
Gross price        = net price x (1 + VAT rate)
Break-even value   = gross price / (1 - dealer buy-back discount)
Required rise      = (1 + premium) x (1 + VAT rate) / (1 - discount) - 1

Take a one kilogramme cast silver bar, with an illustrative silver price of 30 euro per troy ounce, an assumed dealer premium of 8 per cent and an assumed buy-back 3 per cent below the metal value. Those three assumptions are illustrations for the arithmetic, not quoted market terms.

1,000 g / 31.1035        = 32.1507 troy ounces
32.1507 oz x 30.00       = 964.52 euro metal value
964.52 x 1.08            = 1,041.68 euro net price
1,041.68 x 1.23          = 1,281.27 euro gross, of which 239.59 euro is VAT
964.52 x 0.97            = 935.58 euro if you sold it back the same afternoon
1,281.27 / 0.97          = 1,320.90 euro of metal value needed to break even
1,320.90 / 964.52 - 1    = 0.3695, that is roughly 37 per cent

On the day of purchase the position is 345.69 euro under water on a 1,281.27 euro outlay, and the silver price has to rise by roughly 37 per cent before the holding is worth what it cost.

The silver calculator converts a weight into its current value, and the melt value calculator does the same for mixed material. The mark-up itself is defined under premium or agio.

Bars, rounds, coins and granules

Silver reaches an Irish buyer in more shapes than gold does, and the shapes behave differently once tax falls on the whole price. Because 23 per cent lands on the premium as well as on the metal, an expensive small format is taxed on its own expensiveness as well.

A silver bar is the generic term; the production method separates the poured cast bar from the stamped minted bar, while a bullion coin comes from a state mint and carries a face value. Industrial material is sold as granules, and the separable format under the divisible bar.

Where the coin versus bar question is really decided

That comparison, and the way a premium is built from fabrication, packaging and dealer margin, belongs to the guide on buying gold in Ireland, where it is worked through once for both metals. One point is genuinely silver-specific, though: a round is not issued by a state and carries no face value at all, so it was never legal tender anywhere, and the currency question that the Irish capital gains rules turn on cannot arise for it.

What 999, 925 and 800 mean on a piece of silver

Silver fineness is quoted in parts per thousand, and an Irish household usually meets three or four figures rather than one. Only the first belongs to investment material; the rest turn up in inherited tableware.

The figure only becomes money once it is multiplied by weight, which is what the fine weight does:

Fine weight = gross weight in grams x fineness / 1000

A canteen weighing 780 grams and marked 800 therefore holds 780 x 800 / 1000 = 624 grams of fine silver, and the remaining 156 grams are alloy that no refiner pays for. The terms are defined under fineness and fine weight, with the alloys under sterling silver and 800 silver.

Assay marks are the subject of the guide on buying gold in Ireland, which works through the Dublin office and what a punch does and does not prove; the mark itself is described under the fineness hallmark.

Cutlery, scrap and the plated trap

Most Irish silver arrives by inheritance rather than by purchase, and the first question is not fineness but whether the item is solid silver at all. Electroplated tableware carries a film measured in microns over a base metal and is worth close to nothing as metal, however convincing the shine.

Mixed scrap and investment bullion are not the same purchase. Scrap is paid at a discount to the metal because the refiner carries the assay and the melt, while a sealed bullion product is paid close to the metal because it needs neither. Old coinage sits between the two, and identifying the issue comes before valuing it, as explained under silver in circulating coinage.

Volume: the space a silver holding really needs

Silver is roughly half as dense as gold and worth a small fraction per gram, so the same money buys a vastly larger object. Density does the work:

Volume in cubic centimetres = fine weight in grams / density
Silver density = 10.49 g/cm3        Gold density = 19.32 g/cm3

The table takes metal value only, again at an illustrative 30 euro per troy ounce, so VAT and premium sit on top of every figure in the first column.

Those are volumes of solid metal. Real holdings occupy more, because coins arrive in tubes and capsules, bars in blister cards, and none of it stacks without air. A comparable value in gold would fit in a shirt pocket.

Everything that follows from that bulk is the subject of a separate text, and the guide on storing and insuring bullion carries it.

Silver and gold side by side for the same money

Set the two metals against each other and the pattern is consistent: silver is the cheaper entry and the more expensive round trip, the more useful metal and the more awkward object.

Two of those rows move with the market rather than with the law: the mass and bulk multiples follow whatever the ratio between the two metals happens to be on the day, and the break-even figures follow the premium and buy-back assumed above. None of that makes silver the wrong metal; it makes it a different one, bought for different reasons and on a longer view. Why silver moves further than gold in both directions belongs to the guide on how the silver price works, and the other side of the pair to the guide on how the gold price works. The current reading is published on the page for the gold-silver ratio, and the measure itself is defined in the glossary.

Tarnish, milk spots and living with silver indoors

Silver is the only one of the common investment metals that visibly changes in an ordinary Irish house. It does not rust, but it reacts with the traces of sulphur in any indoor air to form a film of silver sulphide that darkens from straw yellow to almost black. Nothing is lost while that happens: the sulphur comes out of the atmosphere rather than out of the coin, and the fine weight is unchanged. What alters is the appearance, and appearance is the first thing a second buyer looks at.

Moisture is the more persistent half of the problem in this climate, because every reaction a silver surface can undergo runs faster when it is damp. A holding kept sealed with a fresh desiccant sachet, clear of rubber bands, wool felt and untreated timber, will look very different after five years from the same holding left loose in a drawer. The chemistry is described under tarnishing, the wider property under corrosion resistance.

Milk spots are not tarnish

Tarnish sits on the surface; milk spots sit in it. They appear as cloudy white blotches on modern struck bullion, sometimes years after purchase, and no household treatment lifts them because there is nothing on top to lift. On a plain bullion coin priced off the metal the effect is limited, since the fine weight is untouched. On anything carrying a collector premium it can be a great deal larger.

Why polishing costs money

An abrasive paste does not clean silver, it removes silver: a few microns of metal, the lustre underneath and the fine detail a grader looks for. On a proof coin it can take the whole premium away in one afternoon, and no later care puts it back.

Carrying silver across a border

There is a cash declaration duty in Ireland, it starts at 10,000 euro, and no quantity of silver triggers it. It comes from Regulation (EU) 2018/1672, given domestic effect by section 42 of the Customs Act 2015, and it bites at the external frontier of the European Union rather than on every journey. Revenue's customs service administers it.

Silver is simply not on the list. The regulation defines cash narrowly and names one metal only, so a traveller carrying silver, platinum or palladium stays outside the obligation whatever the consignment is worth. It is one of the few places in Irish law where a silver holder is asked for less than a gold one, and the gold side of that contrast is worked through in the gold guide rather than here.

Northern Ireland is a different jurisdiction

Everything on this page is the law of the Republic. Northern Ireland belongs to another legal system with its own rules and its own treatment of coins, and a page written for it is not authority for anything south of the border. The physical limit arrives sooner than any threshold anyway: ten thousand euro of silver weighs more than ten kilogrammes, so baggage allowances cap what can be carried. The weight conversions are quickest through the unit converter.

Storing a metal that takes up room

Two constraints arrive in order as a silver holding grows, and neither of them is the value. Volume comes first, because the metal is bulky for the money. Weight comes second, and sooner than most buyers expect.

Kilogrammes of fine silver = metal value in euro x 31.1035 / (price per troy ounce x 1000)
Load in kilogrammes per square metre = (mass of safe + mass of metal) / footprint in square metres

At an illustrative 30 euro per troy ounce, 25,000 euro of metal is 25,000 x 31.1035 / 30,000 = 25.92 kilogrammes of fine silver. Put it in a domestic safe weighing 60 kilogrammes on a footprint of 0.45 by 0.40 metres, and the floor beneath carries (60 + 25.92) / 0.18 = about 477 kilogrammes per square metre. That is a point load on a small area, not a weight spread across a room, and an upstairs timber floor is not obviously built for it. Ask before the safe is bolted down.

Packaging is the second surprise. A sealed box of 500 one-ounce coins holds 500 x 31.1035 = 15,551.75 grams, so 15.55 kilogrammes of fine silver before the capsules, tubes and box are weighed at all. The unit itself is defined under the silver ounce.

Weight arrives before value does

A position that would fit in a shirt pocket in gold takes a shelf in silver. Rated safe capacities, wall fixings and the load one person can lift are all reached at values that look modest on a statement, and splitting a holding across two places answers the load question while raising new ones about access and cover. Where the metal should sit, how a safe is rated and what an insurer expects belong to the guide on storing and insuring bullion, with the domestic option under home storage.

Insurance and the line worth checking

A silver holding meets a policy differently from a gold one, for arithmetic reasons rather than legal ones. Gold concentrates value in one or two objects; silver spreads it over dozens of near-identical pieces, so per-item limits bite in a different place, an aggregate limit is reached by accumulation rather than by a decision, and the insured value drifts upward every time another tube is added.

Coins are not automatically inside a standard contents policy at all. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission lists "medals and coins" among the items such a policy does not usually cover, and what that means, what the condition of average does to a settlement and what the Consumer Insurance Contracts Act 2019 changed about disclosure all belong to the guide on storing and insuring bullion. The silver-specific job sits underneath it: making the holding provable.

A silver claim is settled on the fine weight, so the record has to carry fineness and weight rather than a description. Photographs also age badly on this metal: a piece that was bright at purchase may be dark three years later, and a dated image connects the two. The conversion is defined under fine weight.

What the sale brings up later

The purchase question on this page is a value added tax question. The sale question is a capital tax question, and the two never meet. A private individual selling silver charges no VAT and recovers none, so the 23 per cent paid at the counter simply forms part of what the holding cost. Whether a gain on a later sale is taxed, at what rate, against what annual exemption and by which filing date is worked through in the guide to precious metals and Irish tax, and not one line of it can be taken from a British source.

Two features of a silver holding make that reading worth doing properly. The first is that silver is usually held in many identical units, so questions about what counts as a single disposal arise far more often than they do for one gold bar. The second is that Irish capital gains law does not treat every object alike: an ordinary movable possession and an item counting as currency sit on different sides of a line, and a mixed silver holding routinely straddles it, because a privately struck round was never money anywhere while a state-minted coin was issued as money at home. The test is whether the piece is legal tender when it is acquired and again when it is sold, not whether a number is stamped on the face. Revenue has published that test but no list of coins to read it against, so the answer is worked out piece by piece, and doing that is the tax guide's job rather than this one's.

The break-even arithmetic earlier on this page is a purchase decision, not a tax computation, and "exempt from VAT" says nothing about capital gains any more than "23 per cent on purchase" says anything about a later sale. Which items of expenditure may enter a computation is a question for that guide and, in a real case, for a qualified adviser. The tax calculator applies the same rules.

Selling: spread, buy-back and paperwork

Every dealer quotes two prices: the one at which they sell and the lower one at which they buy. A quote therefore has two sides, the bid price at which a dealer buys and the ask price at which the same dealer sells. The gap between them is the spread, and it is the real cost of a round trip, paid whether the metal rose or fell in between.

Why the percentage looks worse on silver

Handling a box of metal costs about the same in euro whether it holds silver or gold: it has to be counted, checked, insured in transit and stored until it sells. The silver box holds a small fraction of the value, so the identical cost expressed as a percentage is a much larger number. The same effect runs through refining charges. That is a fixed cost divided by a smaller denominator, not a market view.

Two lots of the same fine weight can fetch different money, because what is paid for is not the same thing. Take the canteen from earlier, 780 grams marked 800 and so 624 grams of fine silver, again at an illustrative 30 euro per troy ounce.

Price per gram      = 30.00 / 31.1035                     = 0.96452 euro
Metal value         = 624 x 0.96452                       = 601.86 euro
Refiner's payment   = 601.86 x 0.85 (illustrative rate)   = 511.58 euro
Bullion buy-back    = 601.86 x 0.97 (illustrative rate)   = 583.80 euro

The same 624 grams is worth about 72 euro more in sealed bullion form than as mixed scrap, and the difference is not sentiment: the refiner carries an assay and a melt that the bullion buyer does not. Both percentages are illustrations rather than quoted terms. How mixed material is valued is set out under scrap silver and the process it goes through under refining.

The paperwork is short: keep the original invoice, keep the packaging intact, and count the metal in front of whoever is buying it. Where cash is involved there is a money laundering threshold of 10,000 euro that works in both directions, including cash paid out to a seller. It is a duty on the trader rather than on the private individual, and its scope and its limits are set out in the guide to buying gold in Ireland, with the concept itself under identity verification.

Paper silver is a different asset

A claim on silver is not silver. Exchange traded products, certificates, unallocated accounts and savings plans all place an issuer between the holder and the metal, and what matters is whether specific metal has been set aside. Allocated metal means identified bars held on the holder's behalf; unallocated metal means a claim against a pool, and if the provider fails the holder ranks as a creditor rather than as an owner. The two are defined under allocated metal and unallocated metal, with the fund wrapper under the silver ETF.

For silver the trade-off is sharper than for gold, because the largest practical drawback of the physical metal is precisely what a paper product removes: fifty kilogrammes of bulk, a floor load, a safe, a humidity problem and an inventory, all at once. In their place come a counterparty, an annual charge inside the product, and terms about whether metal can ever be delivered. The risk removed is simply easier to see than the one taken on.

The 23 per cent on this page is a question about a supply of the metal itself and is not an answer about any paper product. How a fund, note or account is treated for Irish tax depends on how it is built, and fund structures in particular are taxed on a basis with nothing in common with the sale of a bar: they carry their own deemed-disposal rule and their own rate. The tax guide sets that out, and the product documentation is the other half. The wider family is described under paper gold.

Where Irish silver buyers most often go wrong

The mistakes in this market are consistent, and nearly all of them come from applying a rule that belongs to another metal or to another country. The table sets the common assumption against what applied in the Republic of Ireland on 17 August 2026.

Rules read across the Irish Sea are the costliest of all

The shared language is the trap. British rules on coins, thresholds and taxes are written in the same words for a different legal system, and Northern Ireland belongs to that system rather than to this one. A figure lifted from a British page is not merely out of date, it is out of jurisdiction.

The second most expensive habit is haggling over the premium while treating the tax as a rounding error. On the kilogramme bar worked through earlier the premium came to 77.16 euro and the VAT to 239.59 euro: the tax was more than three times the mark-up, and unlike the mark-up it cannot be negotiated. Running an offer through the premium calculator before committing shows which half is which.

A short check before you buy

Nothing below is a recommendation to buy anything. It is the list of questions that, asked before the money moves, prevents the errors set out above.

1. Is the price quoted with VAT or without it, and is the 23 per cent shown as its own line?
2. What is the premium, in euro per gram of fine silver rather than as a percentage?
3. What does the same seller pay back today for the identical item?
4. What is the fine weight, and does the marking on the piece support it?
5. Where will 10, 25 or 50 kilogrammes go, and will the floor and the fixings carry it?
6. Is the packaging sealed, and is there any reason to open it before selling?
7. Have you written down form, fineness, gross weight, fine weight, serial number and date?
8. Is your contents cover a question you have asked in writing, or one you have assumed?
9. Have you kept the purchase question and the tax question apart?

The sentence worth carrying away is the one this guide opened with. Investment gold is exempt from Irish value added tax and silver is not, so the same euro buys a different bargain in each metal, and the difference is fixed on the day of purchase. Silver still does things gold does not, and the guide to how the silver price works takes that side of the question, while the metal itself is quoted on the silver price page.