Here is a sentence that trips up almost everyone who owns gold in a retirement account.
Your gold did not go up thirty percent. Your account went up thirty percent, and the tax code does not care about gold at all.
That distinction matters more than it sounds.
Outside an IRA, gold is a collectible. Sell it at a profit and you face a higher maximum long term capital gains rate than you would on a stock. That is a real disadvantage, and it is the single best argument for holding metal inside a retirement account.
Inside an IRA, gold is nothing. It is just a number on a statement.
When money comes out, it is taxed as ordinary income. The same as wages. Not as a collectible, not as a capital gain, not at any special rate.
Which is sometimes better than owning gold personally, sometimes worse, and almost never what people expect.
Let us take it apart.