Precious metals and Irish tax

There is no holding period in Irish law

Capital gains tax is charged under section 28(1) of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 on a disposal. The chapter that holds the exemptions, Part 19 Chapter 7, sections 601 to 613A, relieves no gain on movable property merely because it was owned long enough. A profit taken three weeks after purchase is charged exactly like the same profit taken after twenty-five years.

Anyone who knows the German one-year rule is reading about a different system, and the holding period entry describes that family of rules; where they came from is set out under speculative holding period. Ireland's one time-based exemption, section 604A, covers only land or buildings acquired between 7 December 2011 and 31 December 2014.

The three qualifications that go with it

Time still does three things. A transfer on death gives rise to no capital gains charge, the heir taking the market value at the date of death as their acquisition cost, so the unrealised gain leaves the computation; capital acquisitions tax is separate and taken up later. Indexation under section 556(6A) stops at expenditure incurred in 2002 and the multiplier is 1.000 from 2003, so a buyer from 2005 is taxed on the full nominal gain, while section 556(3) substitutes the market value on 6 April 1974 for anything already held then.

The third qualification runs the other way, because metal held through a fund meets a deemed disposal every eighth year whether or not anything has been sold. There, time creates a charge instead of removing one, and the closing section gives the figures. The tax estimator covers a physical sale only.

Capital gains tax at 33 per cent, and the word that qualifies it

The rate is 33 per cent, in section 28(3) TCA 1997 as amended by section 43 of the Finance Act 2013, for disposals on or after 6 December 2012. It is a flat rate, not one stacked on income, and it stood unchanged on 17 August 2026: the capital gains provisions of the Finance Act 2025 cover only entrepreneur relief and farm restructuring, and the Finance Act 2026 is excise legislation.

Revenue calls 33 per cent the rate for most gains, and that qualifier carries weight, because a gain reaches capital gains tax only if it is capital in nature. Where someone buys and sells repeatedly with an eye on the turn, the badges of trade in section 3(1) TCA 1997 can recast the whole activity as a trade taxed as income at a far higher effective rate. The last section of this guide sets out how that works and why no Irish source marks the line.

The annual personal exemption of 1,270 euro

Every individual has an annual exemption of €1,270, and section 601(2) is unambiguous: only the excess of the gain over €1,270 is charged. It is an allowance, not a threshold, so exceeding it brings the excess into charge rather than the whole gain. The tax-free allowance entry sets out how differently those two mechanisms behave at the margin.

Four limits matter. It belongs to the individual, including a non-resident with an Irish charge, and not to a company or a trust; it cannot be carried forward; it is not transferable between spouses or civil partners, which Revenue states expressly in Tax and Duty Manual Part 19-07-01 at paragraph 1.2; and it falls away to the extent retirement relief has been given, under section 601(5). Order matters too: chattel relief first, losses next, the €1,270 off what survives.

Why a bullion coin is treated differently here than across the Irish Sea

Section 532 TCA 1997 declares that all forms of property are assets, and the list that follows is introduced by the word "including". Because that list is not exhaustive, a gold coin is an asset whether or not it is currency. Writing that a coin is chargeable because of section 532(b) builds a chain the statute does not contain, and it invites the opposite error: that a coin which is not foreign currency falls outside the charge.

What paragraph (b) contributes is the wording the rest of the system borrows, namely any currency other than the currency of the State. Section 44 of the Finance Act 2013, titled "Amendment of references to 'Irish currency'", did exactly that after the changeover: drafting hygiene, not a reform. The British position rests on a provision with no Irish counterpart, one that takes sterling out of the asset definition.

The Sovereign is the awkward case

The Sovereign has real standing in Irish family holdings, and that history is what makes it dangerous: a holder who reads a British page, sees the coin called tax-free and sells a tube of them has acted on foreign law. The same caution covers the Britannia series.

Revenue publishes the test but no coin list: Tax and Duty Manual Part 19-01-02 at paragraph 2.2 says coins count as currency only when they are legal tender at acquisition and at disposal. The wording is almost the British one, and the identity stops at the test, because the relieved currency differs. No Irish manual, eBrief or Tax Appeals Commission decision has yet said that a modern bullion coin is currency here, and the only published reading of such a provision is British, which persuades rather than binds.

Bars and rounds are chattels, and chattels have a cushion

A bar is a chattel, tangible movable property, and section 602 TCA 1997 gives chattels a relief with no counterpart for financial assets. Under section 602(2) a gain is not a chargeable gain where the consideration for the disposal does not exceed €2,540. Revenue's Tax and Duty Manual Part 19-07-02 spells out at paragraph 2.2 what that consideration means: the sale price, without any deduction for expenses.

This is where Irish computations most often go wrong, because Revenue's own public page phrases the rule loosely, in terms of the gain. The statutory wording governs: a bar sold for €4,000 that cost €3,500 shows a gain of €500, but the consideration is €4,000, so section 602(2) does not apply at all, and anyone describing the rule as "gains up to €2,540 are exempt" is describing a far more generous relief than the one Ireland actually has.

Sets, and the anti-fragmentation rule

Section 602(5) stops a holding being sliced to fall under the limit: items forming a set and going to the same or to connected persons count as one disposal, even if sold years apart. Revenue's manual at paragraphs 2.7 and 2.8 requires that the items be essentially similar and complementary, and that the whole be worth more than the sum of its parts. Whether identical minted bars meet that second limb has never been addressed in public, so a programme of small annual sales is not a settled route.

The exclusion that takes the cushion away from coins

Section 602 then withdraws that relief from one class of asset: section 602(7)(b) provides that the section shall not apply in relation to a disposal of currency of any description. Where a coin is currency there is no €2,540 cushion, no marginal relief past it and no deemed sale price for a loss. The gain is chargeable from the first euro of profit, with only the €1,270 exemption in front of it.

That gives the result Irish holders find hardest to believe: on the analysis that best fits the published Irish material, a modern bullion coin is worse placed than a plain bar of identical weight, and the metal has nothing to do with it. It is the coin's status as money in its country of issue that removes a relief the bar keeps. The Krugerrand is untidy in its own right, carrying no stamped face value, and Irish sources do not say whether it meets the test; a Maple Leaf does carry one.

Coins keep their own advantages, chiefly divisibility, and weighing those against the premium belongs to the guide to buying gold in Ireland. Tax belongs in that decision rather than on the day of sale.

A worked example: one bar, one coin, one tax year

The mechanics are clearer in figures. For an individual, on the law in force on 17 August 2026, the computation runs as follows.

Chargeable gain   = sale price − acquisition cost
Taxable amount    = total chargeable gains − losses − personal exemption of €1,270
Capital gains tax = taxable amount × 33 per cent

Take a holder in Cork who bought a 100-gram gold bar for €4,200 and one gold bullion coin for €1,400, and sells both in June 2026, the bar for €9,000 and the coin for €3,100. The bar's sale price is far above €2,540, so section 602 gives nothing and the gain is 9,000 − 4,200 = €4,800. The coin, on the treatment set out above, is excluded from section 602 by section 602(7)(b), and its gain is 3,100 − 1,400 = €1,700.

The exclusion is not academic at that price, even though €3,100 is already past the €2,540 line. Had the same piece been a bar, section 602(3)(a) would have capped the tax attributable to it at half the €560 by which the price exceeds €2,540, that is €280. On that treatment the coin gets no such ceiling, and the difference is the whole point of the previous section.

Total chargeable gains  = 4,800 + 1,700 = €6,500
Less personal exemption = 6,500 − 1,270 = €5,230
Capital gains tax       = 5,230 × 0.33  = €1,725.90

Both disposals fall between January and November, so the €1,725.90 is payable by 15 December 2026 while the Form CG1 return is not due until 31 October 2027.

Now move one figure. Sold alone for €2,400 rather than €9,000, the bar would sit below €2,540 and section 602(2) would take the gain out of charge entirely, however much profit sat inside it; at €2,600 marginal relief caps the tax at half of the €60 excess, that is €30. The relief follows the price, not the profit, and the purchase price calculator shows that side realistically.

Working out the gain, and the costs that do not count

The gain is the difference between what the metal fetched and what it cost, and for most private holders the difficulty is evidence rather than arithmetic: a missing receipt from 2011 leaves the acquisition cost unproven, and that burden lies with the taxpayer rather than with Revenue.

Storage and insurance are not deductible

The most counter-intuitive point is a negative one, stated plainly in Revenue's Tax and Duty Manual Part 19-02-11: the costs of insuring or maintaining the assets are not allowable for capital gains tax purposes. Years of vault fees and specialist premiums reduce the gain by nothing at all, and holders used to property assume the opposite. What that means for choosing between a home safe and a professional vault belongs in the guide to storing and insuring bullion.

Losses run on their own track. Sections 31(b) and 546(5) carry an allowable loss forward without time limit, but there is no carry-back: a loss realised in 2027 cannot reach a gain taxed in 2026. Because the €1,270 exemption comes after losses, a year in which losses absorb the gains wastes it as well.

The open question about euro-denominated coins

One point here is genuinely unresolved. Revenue's Tax and Duty Manual Part 19-01-01, last reviewed in July 2026, states that all types of property are assets for capital gains purposes other than currency denominated in euro. That keys off the denomination rather than off legal tender status in Ireland, and many investment products carry a euro face value.

On that wording the gold collector coins of the Central Bank of Ireland would fall outside the definition of an asset, and so, arguably, might euro-denominated bullion coins of other euro area states, of which the Vienna Philharmonic and its 100 euro face value is the obvious example. Whether an Austrian euro coin is the currency of the State when sold in Dublin has never been answered by Revenue or by the Tax Appeals Commission.

Value added tax at 23 per cent, with one exemption

Value added tax is the second charge, and unlike capital gains tax it is paid when you buy. The standard rate under section 46(1)(a) of the Value-Added Tax Consolidation Act 2010 is 23 per cent, and that is the default for every precious metal transaction unless a relief applies. Exactly one does.

Investment gold is exempt under Schedule 1 Part 2 paragraph 9(1) VATCA 2010, with the definition in section 90(1). The relief is metal-specific in the most literal sense: section 90 and the schedule name gold and nothing else, with no counterpart for silver, platinum or palladium. Those consequences are worked through in the guide to buying silver in Ireland and in the guide to platinum and palladium.

Exempt is not the same as outside the charge

An exempt supply sits inside the value added tax system: the transaction is a taxable event and the tax is relieved, while a supply outside the scope never enters the system. The difference shows on the supplier's side, because exemption blocks the ordinary right to deduct input tax and sections 90(6) to (8) VATCA 2010 open only narrow routes back. The exemption for investment gold entry sets out the mechanism.

What qualifies as investment gold

Two definitions carry the exemption and they are not the same shape. Under section 90(1) VATCA 2010 a bar or wafer is investment gold where it has a fineness of at least 995 parts per thousand and a weight accepted by a bullion market. A coin has to clear four separate tests, set out in the table below, and clear every one of them.

The bar limb leaves a gap in plain sight, because no Irish source publishes the list of weights a bullion market accepts: a tidy series of gram figures offered as the statutory answer has come from the writer rather than from the legislation, and which formats actually change hands here belongs to the guide to buying gold in Ireland. The fineness half is easier, since 999 fine gold clears 995 with room to spare and a kilo bar is refined to the same standard as a twenty gram one.

The 80 per cent ceiling, worked through

The fourth test is the only one that moves with the market, so it repays putting numbers on. On the law in force on 17 August 2026 the arithmetic runs as follows.

Gold value of the coin    = fine weight in grams × gold price per gram
Ceiling for the exemption = gold value × 1.80

Take a one ounce coin of 31.1035 grams fine weight and a gold price of 95 euro a gram, used only to make the sum visible. The gold value is 31.1035 × 95 = €2,954.83 and the ceiling is 2,954.83 × 1.80 = €5,318.69, so a bullion piece offered at €3,250 sits comfortably inside it while a heavily marketed proof coin of identical gold content offered at €6,000 does not, and that supply carries tax at the standard rate. The melt value calculator gives the first half of the sum.

Why the margin scheme does not rescue investment silver

Buyers who have met the margin scheme elsewhere in Europe often assume it softens the 23 per cent on silver, so that the tax bites only on a dealer's mark-up. In Ireland that route is closed for investment metal, and closed by an express carve-out rather than by administrative practice.

What the exclusion actually says

Section 87(1) VATCA 2010 defines second-hand goods for the scheme and then removes a category by name, providing that the definition does not include precious metals and precious stones. Precious metals there covers silver, gold and platinum, and it also covers any article containing one of those metals where the consideration does not exceed the market price of the metal. A plain silver bar or a modern bullion coin priced off its content sits squarely inside that exclusion, so the supply is taxed on the full price.

Numismatic silver is different in kind. A genuine collector piece, valued for rarity and condition rather than for weight, is a collectors' item and can run through the scheme, but the tax is then 23 per cent on the margin, which is a narrower base and not a lower rate. The line between a collector coin and bullion turns on pricing and demand. Whether palladium can ever run through the scheme has no published Irish answer, so nothing is asserted for it here.

The same absence explains the position of the platinum group. There is nothing resembling section 90 behind platinum, and nothing behind palladium either, which is why the guide to platinum and palladium treats the charge as a structural feature of those metals rather than as a detail.

The 15,000 euro identification duty, and what it is not

One further obligation sits inside the investment gold rules and is regularly reported as something it is not. Section 90(9) VATCA 2010 requires a supplier of investment gold to establish and keep the customer's identity where the consideration reaches €15,000, in a single supply or in a series of linked supplies. It is a duty to identify and to document; it creates no report and sends nothing anywhere.

That matters because a separate €10,000 figure circulates in the same conversations. It is a cash threshold under section 25(1)(i) of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010, it bites only on payments made or received in cash, and it belongs at the counter rather than in a return. How it works there is set out in the guide to buying gold in Ireland, along with the separate customs declaration that applies at the external frontier of the Union and is described under customs and importing precious metals.

The record kept under section 90(9) is the supplier's record, not a filing made on your behalf, so identity verification at the counter relieves you of nothing set out above.

Capital acquisitions tax falls on the person who receives

The third charge arrives when metal changes hands without a sale, and it is built on a different principle from the one most English language material describes. Capital acquisitions tax is an acquisitions tax: it is charged on the beneficiary, who is the accountable person under section 45(1) of the Capital Acquisitions Tax Consolidation Act 2003 and who files the return under section 46(2). The estate is not the taxpayer. Three children inheriting equal shares of a coin holding are three separate taxpayers with three separate computations, each measured against that child's own history of acquisitions.

The rate is 33 per cent, in Schedule 2 Part 2 CATCA 2003, and it applies to the part of an acquisition that exceeds the relevant group threshold rather than to the whole of it. Gifts and inheritances run through the same machinery, with the same groups and the same thresholds, which is why a lifetime handover of a coin collection and a bequest of the same collection reach much the same answer.

Because the charge follows the recipient, what matters is not how large an estate is but how it is divided and who takes each part, since every beneficiary brings a personal threshold and a personal record of earlier acquisitions. A holding of silver cutlery split among four grandchildren behaves quite differently from the same holding left whole to one of them.

The three groups, the lifetime thresholds and the 1991 look-back

Every beneficiary falls into one of three groups, and the group depends on their relationship to the disponer, meaning the person the property comes from. The thresholds have stood unchanged since 2 October 2024, when section 99 of the Finance Act 2024 raised them, and they were unchanged on 17 August 2026.

Aggregation runs inside a group, not across them

The thresholds are lifetime totals, not annual or per gift figures: every prior benefit taken since 5 December 1991 is added back, whichever person it came from, and the threshold is applied once to that running total. That must not be read as a single pot for everything. Aggregation happens strictly within one group, so a €30,000 legacy from an uncle reduces the Group B threshold and leaves Group A untouched for whatever a parent later leaves. There is no periodic renewal either: the German rule under which a lifetime allowance refreshes every ten years has no Irish counterpart, and a threshold used up in 1998 stays used up.

The small gift exemption is the one genuinely annual figure. Section 69(2) CATCA 2003 exempts the first €3,000 of gifts taken from any one disponer in a calendar year and stacks by disponer, so two parents can each give that amount; section 69(3) preserves it where a gift becomes an inheritance because the disponer dies within two years.

Spouses, former spouses and the relief that follows the deceased

A gift or inheritance taken by a spouse or civil partner from the other is exempt under sections 70 and 71 CATCA 2003, with no ceiling of any kind. This is genuine exemption rather than a generous threshold, and it is the reason the first death in a marriage rarely produces a capital acquisitions charge on a metal holding, whatever the holding is worth.

The exemption is anchored to the disponer, and its boundaries are sharper than most people expect. Divorced spouses and dissolved civil partners are not covered: an acquisition from a former spouse falls into Group C with its €20,000 threshold, and that Revenue operates a separate relief for court ordered transfers between separated and divorced couples is itself proof that the general exemption does not reach them. Cohabiting partners are not spouses for this purpose either, however long the relationship has lasted, and since the Marriage Act 2015 no new civil partnership can be registered in the State, so the term describes a closing category rather than an option available today.

Surviving spouse relief and why spouses are inside the group system

The frequently repeated line that spouses sit outside the groups altogether is wrong, and the relief that shows why is a valuable one. Where a person's spouse or civil partner has died, that survivor takes acquisitions from the deceased's relatives as though they stood in the deceased's own relationship to them: a widow inheriting from her late husband's mother is treated as a child of that disponer rather than as a stranger, so Group A applies in place of Group C. The relief operates automatically and is not something to be claimed or waived.

One contrast runs the other way from the pattern of this guide. Ireland places no restriction on the spousal exemption where the receiving spouse is not domiciled here, whereas the United Kingdom caps the equivalent relief in exactly that case, and on that narrow point the Irish position is the more generous one.

Valuing a precious metal holding for capital acquisitions tax

Everything above depends on a number, and section 26(2) CATCA 2003 supplies the standard: market value is the price the property would fetch in the open market on the valuation date. Bullion is unusually tractable, since the spot price on a given day is public and the intrinsic value of a bar is close to the whole of its worth. Collector pieces are harder, because rarity and condition drive them rather than weight.

The valuation date is not always the date of death

For a gift the valuation date is the date of the gift, under section 30(1), and that is the end of the matter. For an inheritance it is less obvious. Section 30(4) takes the earliest of three moments: the date the beneficiary becomes entitled to retain the property for their own benefit, the date they actually retain it, and the date it is delivered to them. In a long administration those dates can fall well after the death, with the metal price moving in between. There is one clean exception: where coins are handed over in contemplation of death, the arrangement lawyers call a donatio mortis causa, section 30(2) fixes the valuation date at the date of death, and that is precisely what a family gathering around a small box of coins tends to produce. The gold calculator puts a figure on such a box for the day that matters.

Assets abroad follow their own rule and it is not the intuitive one. A gift or inheritance of foreign property is fully within the charge once either the disponer or the beneficiary is resident in the State, under sections 6(2)(a) and (c) and 11(2)(a) and (b). Only where neither is resident does it fall outside the charge, under sections 6(2)(d) and 11(2)(c), and that is non-taxability rather than exemption. Foreign tax on the same property is credited unilaterally under section 107(2), limited to the lower of the two amounts, and item 15 of the statement of affairs, Form SA.2, asks for all foreign assets without a threshold. Metal in a vault in Zurich or Frankfurt belongs on that form.

Taxable value = market value at the valuation date + prior benefits in the same group since 5 December 1991
Tax           = (taxable value − group threshold) × 33 per cent

A worked case makes the pieces fit. On the law in force on 17 August 2026, a nephew inherits forty one-ounce gold coins from his aunt, valued at €2,900 each on the valuation date, having already taken a €10,000 cash gift from her in 2019. The coins are worth 40 × 2,900 = €116,000, and the 2019 gift keeps its first €3,000 as a small gift, so €7,000 is aggregated. His Group B total is 116,000 + 7,000 = €123,000, the threshold of €40,000 comes off, and 83,000 × 0.33 gives a charge of €27,390, with a return due as well since €123,000 is far past the Group B filing figure of €32,000. Had the same coins passed to a child of the aunt, the same €123,000 would have been a Group A aggregate, because the 2019 gift would have been a Group A benefit too. The Group A threshold of €400,000 absorbs it, the tax is nil, and no return arises either, since €123,000 also sits below the Group A filing figure of €320,000. Only the relationship differs.

Deadlines, forms and the returns that are due without any tax

The most expensive mistake in this area is procedural rather than substantive, because Irish capital gains tax splits payment and filing into two obligations on two different dates, and discharging one does nothing for the other. Payment comes first, months before any return exists.

Two obligations on two different dates

For disposals between 1 January and 30 November the tax is due on 15 December of the same year. For a disposal in December it is due on 31 January following, under section 959AQ(1) TCA 1997. The return, Form CG1 for a person not otherwise within self assessment, is due by 31 October of the year after the disposal, under section 959A. Capital acquisitions tax works to a single pay and file date of 31 October, with the year determined by the valuation date under section 46(2A): a valuation date from 1 January to 31 August files that same year, one from 1 September to 31 December files the following year.

Sale of a bar in June 2026        → pay by 15 December 2026 → Form CG1 by 31 October 2027
Sale of a bar in December 2026    → pay by 31 January 2027  → Form CG1 by 31 October 2027
Valuation date 3 May 2026         → capital acquisitions tax paid and filed by 31 October 2026
Valuation date 3 October 2026     → capital acquisitions tax paid and filed by 31 October 2027

Returns are also due where nothing is owed. A capital gains return is required for any year with chargeable disposals even where the €1,270 exemption or the chattel relief reduces the tax to nothing, and a capital acquisitions return is triggered once benefits in a group pass 80 per cent of that group's threshold, under section 46(4)(a) CATCA 2003. On current figures that is €320,000, €32,000 and €16,000, due at those levels even though no tax arises until the full threshold is passed.

Trading, paper gold and where professional advice is needed

Two situations take a holder out of everything described so far, and both are better recognised early than discovered afterwards. The first is trading. Where a pattern of buying and selling shows the badges of trade under section 3(1) TCA 1997, the profit is trading income under Schedule D Case I rather than a chargeable gain, carrying income tax, the universal social charge and pay related social insurance, together in the region of 52 to 55 per cent. Section 551 settles only which charge takes priority where both could apply; it does not mark the line, and neither does any published Irish figure.

Paper gold reverses the rule about time

The second situation is structural. Metal held through a fund is not metal held as a chattel, and the rules invert: a fund investment meets a deemed disposal at the end of every eighth year whether or not anything has been sold, and the charge is exit tax at 38 per cent for events on or after 1 January 2026, reduced from 41 per cent, with no €1,270 exemption and no relief for losses. Where physical metal is charged only when you act, paper gold can be charged because you did not, so the choice between a gold exchange traded fund and a bar in a vault is a tax decision as much as a practical one. Not every product marketed as gold has the same structure, and a given wrapper is a question for an adviser with the prospectus in front of them.

Four points in this guide are unsettled or fact specific and each is worth professional time: whether a particular euro denominated coin is an asset at all; whether identical bars sold separately form a set under section 602(5); whether an activity has crossed into trading; and how a foreign holding meets the credit for foreign tax. Revenue gives individual opinions, and on the first an opinion obtained before the sale is the only reliable answer available.

Everything set out here describes the law of the Republic of Ireland as it stood on 17 August 2026, and Northern Ireland is governed by United Kingdom legislation to which none of it applies. Where the metal is still in a drawer, safekeeping belongs in the guide to storing and insuring bullion and anything found in the ground in the guide to burying gold and the law. This guide is general information about Irish tax legislation. It is not tax advice or legal advice for your circumstances, it recommends no dealer and forecasts no price, and it cannot replace a solicitor or an accountant who knows your file.