In a recent U.S. Tax Court case, the Court ruled against an IRA owner and deemed his IRA distributed and taxable as the IRA owner failed to properly execute his intended self-directed IRA real estate investment. Dabney v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo 2014-108.

The IRA owner had an IRA at Charles Schwab and intended to use the IRA to acquire real estate in Brian Head, UT. Upon conducting research Mr. Dabney learned that an IRA could own real estate. However, instead of rolling or transferring his IRA funds to a self directed IRA custodian who would allow his IRA to own real estate, Mr. Dabney took a distribution of the IRA and directed Schwab to wire the funds to closing for the purchase of the property. Additionally, he instructed title and eventually received a deed in the name of his Schwab IRA.

The problem was that rather than invest his IRA into real estate he instead distributed his IRA and use the distributed fund to buy real estate outside of his IRA. Charles Schwab issued Mr. Dabney a 1099-R for that distribution and Mr. Dabney contested the 1099-R and the taxes owed as a result arguing that the funds were used to buy a property owned by his Schwab IRA. Mr. Dabney argued that Charles Schwab made a mistake. However, the Court ruled against him because his funds were distributed out of his Charles Schwab IRA and because his IRA funds and the real estate were not held by a self-directed IRA custodian that allowed for IRAs to own real estate. The Court stated that an IRA can certainly hold real estate but that Charles Schwab’s policies did not allow for Mr. Dabney’s IRA to own real estate and since his custodian would not hold the real estate as an asset of his IRA that it was deemed distributed.

The lesson to be learned from the Dabney case is that in order to properly execute a self-directed IRA investment into an asset such as real estate, the IRA owner needs to roll over or transfer their IRA funds first to a self-directed IRA custodian who allows the IRA to own real estate and then that self-directed IRA will actually take title and ownership to the IRA asset directly. While these rules seem simple, I’d estimate that I speak to at least one or two IRA owners a year who took a distribution from an IRA and used those funds to buy real estate (or some other alternative asset) thinking that the real estate would still be owned by their IRA and that the funds would not be distributed and subject to tax. The confusion usually arises with the non-self directed custodian who misunderstands what the the account owner is trying to do (invest the IRA, not distribute it). Keep in mind, that in order to own real estate with a self-directed IRA, you must have a self-directed IRA custodian.