Here is a thing you are allowed to do, legally, starting right now.
Log into your IRA. Sell every single position. All of it, at once, including the stock you have held since 2009 that is up 700 percent.
Tax owed: zero.
Forms generated: none.
Conversations with your accountant: also none, unless you just want to catch up.
Try that in a regular brokerage account and you will spend the spring doing arithmetic about cost basis and writing a check with a number on it that makes you briefly reconsider your life choices.
So yes, selling inside an IRA is free. But "free" is doing some work in that sentence, and the whole point of this article is to explain what it is hiding.
Because the tax did not vanish. It got postponed, reshaped, and moved to a different door. And knowing where that door is changes how you should use this account.