Whats the differance between a Roth IRA and a Self-Directed Roth IRA or are they the same?

Oldman answered one year ago …

P.S. Mario..I recently learned a wee bit about self-directed sheltered retirement accounts...that can hold real estate, collect rent on a boat-slip, hold all kinds of stuff...EXCLUDING collectibles of any type, artwork, bullion of any type [except it's ok to hold U.S. Treasury minted gold and silver].

One of the things about these "self-directed" IRA's is that you have to have some cash flow within them to pay 990t or 920t income taxes from the IRA in order to satisfy the Treasury Dept. Ruling on passive investment income, or income from debt-financed investments = Code section 514; and you can't make any personal use of anything in any IRA, or it loses it's tax-exempt status...so you can't put your home into an IRA. (you can't pay these taxes from fund outside of the IRA, because that wouod be considered a late or excess contribution!)

Nor can you borrow the money in an IRA for any purpose (except for the recent provision for first-time home purchases), for a loan to pay bills, for leverage, etc. So these are very special cases, and cost a lot of tax-advisor assistance to set up a "Self-Directed IRA", and usually it's done by those who have > 6 figure IRA's.