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In April 2006 you could put $4,000 into an IRA. If you were 50 or older you could add another $1,000 on top of that. The required minimum distribution age was 70 and a half. Nobody had heard of a designated Roth 401(k) surviving past 2010, because it was scheduled to expire. Bitcoin did not exist. The word "crypto" meant a puzzle.
Mountain West IRA opened that month, in Boise, as a self-directed IRA and Solo 401(k) Administrator. Twenty years later the contribution limit is $7,500 with a $1,100 catch-up, the RMD age is 73 on its way to 75, and the IRS has been treating virtual currency as property for twelve years.
Here is what happened in between. Every entry below is a real, dated change, and under each one is the part that actually matters to somebody holding alternative assets inside a retirement account.
The Pension Protection Act was signed on August 17, 2006. It did something quiet and enormous. The designated Roth 401(k), which had launched in 2006 with an expiration date built in, was made permanent. The saver's credit was made permanent at the same time. The Act also opened a direct path from a qualified employer plan straight into a Roth IRA, effective for distributions beginning in 2008.
Why it mattered. Before this, the Roth side of the house was a pilot program with a sunset. After this, it was permanent infrastructure. Every Roth conversion conversation of the last twenty years traces back to that signature.
Total United States retirement market assets stood at roughly $17.9 trillion at the end of 2007. At the end of 2008 they stood at roughly $14.0 trillion. Those are ICI figures, and they describe the market as a whole.
Why it mattered. People who had never questioned a brokerage statement started asking what else was allowed. Self-direction had been legal since IRAs were created in 1974, but 2008 is the year a lot of people went looking for the rulebook for the first time.
For decades, if your modified adjusted gross income was over $100,000 you could not convert a traditional IRA to a Roth. A 2005 law removed that ceiling effective January 1, 2010. Anyone converting in 2010 got a one-time option to spread the resulting income across 2011 and 2012.
Why it mattered. This is the single most consequential change of the twenty years for high-income savers. The conversion door has stayed open ever since. There is still no income limit on conversions.
An account holder rolled 401(k) money into an IRA. The IRA bought roughly 98 percent of a newly formed LLC. The LLC ran a used-car business, and it paid the account holder a salary as an officer. The Tax Court held in 2013 that the salary was a prohibited transaction. The Eighth Circuit affirmed in 2015.
Why it mattered. This is the case people should read before they get creative with an IRA-owned entity. The IRA and the entity it substantially owns are not treated as strangers. Paying yourself out of something your IRA owns is where a lot of otherwise careful people get into trouble.
March 25. IRS Notice 2014-21 established that virtual currency is treated as property for federal tax purposes, not as currency. General property rules apply.
June 12. The Supreme Court decided Clark v. Rameker. An inherited IRA is not treated as "retirement funds" for federal bankruptcy exemption purposes. The Court pointed to three features of an inherited account: no new contributions, mandatory withdrawals regardless of age, and the ability to take the whole balance at any time without penalty.
And the rollover rule. The Tax Court decided Bobrow v. Commissioner, holding that the 60-day rollover limit applies across all of a person's IRAs in the aggregate, not per account. The IRS set January 1, 2015 as the date it would apply that reading.
Why it mattered. The crypto notice is the reason the digital asset question has a twelve-year-old answer. Clark v. Rameker is the reason an inherited account is a different animal from your own. And Bobrow is the reason we tell people to use a trustee-to-trustee transfer instead of a 60-day rollover. Transfers are not limited. That one distinction has saved more accounts than any other sentence we say on the phone.
In December 2016 the GAO published a report on retirement accounts holding unconventional assets. Seventeen of twenty-six surveyed providers reported about 488,000 accounts holding roughly $50 billion in such assets as of the end of 2015. GAO said plainly that the true total was unknown.
The report flagged three risks for account owners: accidentally triggering a prohibited transaction with a disqualified person, unmonitored unrelated business taxable income, and stale or unreliable fair market valuations.
Why it mattered. Those three risks are still the three risks. Nothing on that list has aged.
The Department of Labor published its fiduciary rule on April 8, 2016. On March 15, 2018 the Fifth Circuit vacated it in full.
Why it mattered. For two years the industry rearranged itself around a rule that then stopped existing. It is a useful reminder that "the government is about to change everything" and "the government changed everything" are different sentences, and only one of them should change your paperwork.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was signed December 22, 2017. Starting with conversions made on or after January 1, 2018, a Roth conversion can no longer be recharacterized. There is no undo button.
Why it mattered. Before 2018 a conversion was reversible if the math went sideways. After 2018 it is permanent the moment it is done. Recharacterizing a regular annual contribution between traditional and Roth is still allowed. Only conversions lost the do-over.
The SECURE Act was signed December 20, 2019. Three changes stand out.
The RMD age moved from 70 and a half to 72. The age cap on traditional IRA contributions was repealed, so people over 70 and a half with earned income could keep contributing. And for most non-spouse beneficiaries of owners who died after December 31, 2019, the lifetime "stretch" was replaced by a ten-year payout window, with carve-outs for a surviving spouse, a minor child of the owner, a disabled or chronically ill beneficiary, and a beneficiary not more than ten years younger.
Why it mattered. Every beneficiary designation form signed before 2020 was written under a different set of assumptions. Most of them have never been looked at since.
The CARES Act, signed March 27, 2020, waived all required minimum distributions for 2020, including for inherited accounts, regardless of whether anyone was affected by the pandemic. It also allowed coronavirus-related distributions up to $100,000 in aggregate, with the income spreadable over three years and repayable within three years.
Why it mattered. Mostly it mattered that the phones did not stop. Real estate transactions inside retirement accounts kept closing through a year when a lot of things did not.
Signed December 29, 2022. The RMD age moved again, to 73 starting in 2023, and it is scheduled to move to 75 in 2033. The $1,000 IRA catch-up, frozen for two decades, was indexed to inflation. And the excise tax on a missed RMD dropped from 50 percent to 25 percent, and to 10 percent if corrected in a timely way.
Why it mattered. Three different RMD ages now apply depending on birth year. That alone generates more phone calls than any other topic in this office.
On July 19, 2024 the IRS published final RMD regulations. They settled the question the industry had argued about since 2020. If the original account owner died on or after their required beginning date, a beneficiary subject to the ten-year rule must also take annual distributions in years one through nine, then empty the account by year ten. Treasury rejected the comments asking to drop the annual requirement. The regulations apply for calendar years beginning on or after January 1, 2025.
Why it mattered. Four years of "we think, but nobody knows" ended. If you inherited an account between 2020 and 2024 and were told to just empty it by year ten, that guidance may have been incomplete.
On May 28, 2025 the Department of Labor rescinded its 2022 guidance telling 401(k) fiduciaries to use "extreme care" before offering cryptocurrency, and returned to a neutral posture, neither endorsing nor disapproving.
On August 7, 2025 an executive order directed the Department of Labor and the SEC to reexamine access to alternative assets inside employer 401(k) plans, naming private market assets, real estate, actively managed digital asset vehicles, commodity interests, and infrastructure.
On September 16, 2025 final regulations landed on catch-up contributions. Participants age 50 and over whose prior-year FICA wages from that employer exceeded $145,000, indexed, will have to make catch-up contributions as designated Roth. This generally applies to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2026, and it applies to 401(k), 403(b) and governmental 457(b) plans. It does not apply to IRAs. If you run a Solo 401(k) and pay yourself W-2 wages above that threshold, this one is yours to plan around.
Why it mattered. After twenty years of alternative assets being the thing you had to go find on your own, the conversation started happening at the employer plan level.
The IRA contribution limit is $7,500, with a $1,100 catch-up for anyone 50 and over. That $1,100 is worth pausing on. The catch-up sat at exactly $1,000 from 2006 through 2025. SECURE 2.0 indexed it starting in 2024, and 2026 is the first year the indexing actually moved the number.
On the plan side, the elective deferral limit is $24,500. The age 50 catch-up is $8,000. The higher catch-up for ages 60 through 63 is $11,250.
Total United States retirement market assets were about $47.6 trillion as of March 31, 2026, with about $18.2 trillion of that in IRAs, per ICI.
And on March 31, 2026 the Department of Labor published a proposed rule creating a safe harbor for plan fiduciaries selecting menu options that include alternative assets. Read that word carefully. Proposed. It is not law, it is not in effect, and it addresses employer plan menus rather than self-directed IRAs. We will tell you when that changes.
Here is the part nobody writes an article about, because nothing happened. Which is exactly why it is worth your attention.
Prohibited transactions. Section 4975 has been sitting there the whole time. Your IRA cannot transact with you or with a disqualified person. Not in 2006, not now.
Disqualified persons. You, your spouse, your parents and grandparents, your children and grandchildren and their spouses, and entities you substantially control. Your brother and your cousin are generally not on the list. That surprises people in 2026 exactly as much as it surprised them in 2006.
No personal benefit. You cannot live in it, vacation in it, store your things in it, or pay yourself to fix it. The Ellis case is the expensive version of this lesson.
Unrelated business taxable income and debt-financed income. If an account holds debt-financed real property or runs an operating business, there may be a tax filing owed by the account. This was true in 2006, it was one of the GAO's three flagged risks in 2016, and it is true today.
Fair market valuation reporting. Alternative assets have to be valued annually and reported. A later GAO report found that roughly 20 percent of the relevant forms it examined were missing a fair market value. That is a paperwork problem that has been consistent for two decades.
What an Administrator is, and what twenty years of it looks like
Mountain West IRA is an Administrator. We handle record-keeping, reporting and transaction processing for self-directed IRAs and Solo 401(k)s. We do not sell assets. We do not recommend assets. We do not tell anyone what to buy, and we never will.
That distinction is why we can hand you a twenty-year timeline of rule changes with no product attached to the end of it. Our three Certified IRA Services Professionals hold that certification through the American Bankers Association's Institute of Certified Bankers, which requires a minimum of three years working with clients in the IRA industry plus specialized training and testing.
Twenty years, one Boise office, and the same answer to the same question: here is what the rules allow, here is the paperwork, and here is the number for your own advisor.
What is a self-directed IRA?
A self-directed IRA is an individual retirement account that allows the account holder to hold alternative assets such as real estate, promissory notes, private placements, precious metals and tax liens, in addition to publicly traded options. The tax rules are the same as any other IRA. The difference is the range of what the account can hold and who makes the decisions.
How long have self-directed IRAs been allowed?
Since IRAs were created by ERISA in 1974. The tax code has always described what an IRA cannot hold, which is life insurance and most collectibles, rather than a list of what it can hold. Self-direction is not a loophole and it is not new. It is simply less common than the standard brokerage arrangement.
What is the difference between an IRA Administrator and an IRA Custodian?
An Administrator handles record-keeping, reporting and transaction processing for the account. A Custodian holds legal title to the assets. Neither one gives advice. Mountain West IRA is an Administrator. If someone in this industry calls themselves your advisor, that word carries a specific meaning, and it is worth asking what they mean by it.
What is the IRA contribution limit for 2026?
$7,500 for the year, plus a $1,100 catch-up contribution for anyone age 50 or older, for a total of $8,600. In 2006 those figures were $4,000 and $1,000.
What is the RMD age in 2026?
It depends on your birth year. Under SECURE 2.0, the applicable age is 73 for people born between January 1, 1951 and December 31, 1958, and 75 for people born in 1959 or later. Before 2020 the age was 70 and a half. Between 2020 and 2022 it was 72.
Who is a disqualified person for a self-directed IRA?
Generally the account holder, the account holder's spouse, lineal ascendants such as parents and grandparents, lineal descendants such as children and grandchildren and their spouses, certain fiduciaries and service providers, and entities in which those people hold a controlling interest. Siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces and nephews are generally not disqualified persons, but the entity rules can still pull a transaction in. Check with your own advisor before assuming.
Can my self-directed IRA buy real estate that I use?
No. An asset held inside the account cannot provide a personal benefit to the account holder or to a disqualified person. That includes living in it, vacationing in it, storing property in it, or performing the maintenance yourself. This has been the rule the entire time.
Can a self-directed IRA hold cryptocurrency?
The IRS has treated virtual currency as property for federal tax purposes since Notice 2014-21, issued in March 2014. Whether a particular account can hold a particular digital asset depends on the account, the provider, and how the asset is held and valued. Talk to your own advisor about your specific situation.
How many times can I roll over my IRA in a year?
A 60-day rollover between IRAs is limited to one in any twelve-month period, counted across all of your IRAs in the aggregate, not per account. That has been the rule since January 1, 2015. Trustee-to-trustee transfers are not subject to that limit, and neither are Roth conversions or plan-to-IRA rollovers.
What happens to an IRA I inherit?
For most non-spouse beneficiaries of owners who died after 2019, the account has to be emptied within ten years. Final regulations published in July 2024 confirmed that if the original owner died on or after their required beginning date, the beneficiary also has to take annual distributions in years one through nine. Separately, the Supreme Court held in 2014 that an inherited IRA is not protected as retirement funds in federal bankruptcy.
Is any self-directed IRA provider approved by the IRS?
No. The IRS does not approve providers, assets, or opportunities. If you see the phrase "IRS approved" attached to anything in this industry, treat it as a warning sign and ask more questions.
What are the biggest risks with a self-directed IRA?
The GAO identified three in its 2016 report and they have not changed: accidentally engaging in a prohibited transaction with a disqualified person, unmonitored unrelated business taxable income or debt-financed income, and unreliable or missing fair market valuations. All three are avoidable with good record-keeping and good advice.
Ready to take more control of your retirement? Mountain West IRA can help you open a Self-Directed IRA or Solo 401(k), so you can invest in what you know best.
📞 Call us at 866-377-3311
📅 Schedule your free consultation: https://outlook.office365.com/book/MountainWestIRA@mwira.com/?imsaljsauthenabled=true
You can explore our educational content on our YouTube channel and visit our Blogs Page.
https://www.youtube.com/@MountainWestIRA & https://www.mountainwestira.com/blog
If this topic sparked questions, reach out to our team. We are here to help you understand the rules, the process, and how self-directed retirement accounts work.
Not investment, tax, or legal advice. Check with your own financial advisor about your specific situation.
This post is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Please consult with a financial advisor for personalized advice.
Mountain West IRA, Inc. does not render tax, legal, accounting, investment, or other professional advice. If accounting, tax, legal, investment, or other similar expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.
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