Self-Directed IRA LLC & Checkbook Control

Most people think their IRA can only hold stocks, bonds and mutual funds. An IRA LLC can own other types of assets. Federal law has always allowed an IRA to own almost anything except life insurance and collectibles. The problem has never been the law. The problem is that every time a self-directed IRA owner wants to write a check, the custodian has to write it, and the custodian charges a fee and takes days or weeks to do it.

 

The IRA/LLC, often called a checkbook control IRA, is the structure investors use to solve that problem. Your IRA owns 100% of an Arizona limited liability company. The LLC opens its own bank account. The IRA's custodian deposits funds from the IRA into the LLC's bank account. You serve as the manager of the LLC and sign the checks. The custodian stays out of the day-to-day transactions.

 

It is a legitimate structure with real support in the case law. It is also a structure that has blown up spectacularly for taxpayers who did not understand the rules. In the cases below, ordinary people lost their entire retirement accounts in a single tax year because of one signature, one salary check, or one safe in a bedroom closet. This article explains how the structure works, what the courts have actually held, and what an Arizona operating agreement must say to keep you out of trouble.

 

Table of Contents

What Is an IRA/LLC?

An IRA/LLC is a limited liability company whose sole member is your individual retirement account. Not you. Your IRA.

 

That distinction is the entire point, and it is the thing people get wrong most often. When the company is formed, the member listed in the records is something like "ABC Trust Company FBO Jane Investor IRA #12345." Jane is not a member. Jane owns no part of the LLC. Jane's IRA owns all of it, and Jane's IRA is a separate taxpayer-exempt pot of money that happens to have her name on the statement.

 

Jane's role is different. She is appointed manager of the LLC. As manager she signs contracts, opens the bank account, writes the checks and makes the investment decisions. She has authority over the money without owning it, the same way a trustee has authority over trust property.

 

That is where the nickname comes from. Without the LLC, every transaction runs through the custodian: you submit a direction, the custodian reviews it, the custodian cuts the check, and you pay a transaction fee and wait. With the LLC, the custodian makes exactly one investment, a purchase of 100% of the membership interest in your LLC, and after that the LLC's checkbook is in your hands.

The three parties and what each one does

• The custodian or trustee. A bank, trust company or other entity approved under IRC §408(a)(2) to hold IRA assets. After the LLC is funded, the custodian holds one asset: the membership interest. It reports the value of that interest to the IRS every year on Form 5498.
• The LLC. An Arizona limited liability company formed under the Arizona Limited Liability Company Act, A.R.S. §29-3101 and following. It has its own EIN, its own bank account, and it takes title to the investments purchased by the LLC with the IRA's funds.
• You, as manager. You direct the company. You do not own it, you are not paid by it, and you never mix its money with yours.

How the Structure Works, Step by Step

Here is what actually happens, in order:

 

1. You open a self-directed IRA with a custodian that permits alternative assets. Most large brokerage houses do not. You then move money into it, either by transferring an existing IRA or by rolling over a former employer's 401(k). A trustee-to-trustee transfer avoids the 60-day rollover rules and the one-rollover-per-year limitation entirely, so it is almost always the better route.
2. The LLC is formed with Articles of Organization filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission and, far more importantly, with a custom operating agreement written for an IRA-owned company. The IRA, not you, is named as the initial member.
3. The LLC gets its own EIN from the IRS. Do not use your Social Security number and do not use the IRA's tax identification number for the bank account.
4. You direct the custodian to buy the LLC. You submit a buy direction letter telling the custodian to invest, say, $250,000 of IRA cash in exchange for 100% of the membership interests. The custodian wires the money to the LLC's new bank account. Your IRA statement now shows one holding: an LLC interest.
5. The LLC opens a bank account in the name of the LLC, using the LLC's EIN, with you as the authorized signer in your capacity as manager. No personal accounts. No joint accounts. No "I'll just run it through my business checking for now."
6. The LLC invests. It buys the rental house, funds the private loan, subscribes to the fund, or buys the tax lien. Title reads in the LLC's name. Every dollar of rent, interest and sale proceeds comes back to the LLC's account.
7. You report a value once a year. The custodian needs a fair market value for the LLC interest each December 31 so it can file Form 5498. For real estate this usually means an appraisal or a broker's opinion of value. You cannot simply report the original purchase price forever.

A concrete example. Bob rolls $300,000 from an old 401(k) into a self-directed IRA. The IRA buys 100% of Bob's Arizona LLC, Sunburst Holdings LLC. Sunburst buys a Mesa rental house for $265,000 and keeps $35,000 in the bank for repairs and vacancies. The tenant's rent checks are payable to Sunburst Holdings LLC. When the water heater fails, Bob writes a check from the Sunburst account the same afternoon. He does not call the custodian, does not pay a transaction fee, and does not wait a week. Four years later Sunburst sells the house for $360,000. The gain lands in the Sunburst account tax-deferred, because the LLC's owner is a tax-exempt retirement account.

Why Investors Use an IRA/LLC

Speed

This is the real reason, and everything else is secondary. In a competitive market a seller will not wait four business days for a custodian's earnest money check. An auction will not hold a tax lien while paperwork clears. A contractor who needs $8,000 to keep a rehab moving does not care about your custodian's processing queue. Checkbook control turns a multi-day approval process into a signature.

Cost

Custodians commonly charge per-asset and per-transaction fees. An IRA that owns one rental house through a custodian may generate dozens of billable transactions a year, and every repair invoice, every insurance premium, every property tax payment is one of them. An IRA that owns one LLC interest generates a single asset holding fee. For an active investor the savings frequently exceed the cost of forming the LLC in the first year.

Liability containment

If your IRA takes title to a rental house directly and a tenant's guest is injured on the property, the claim reaches the IRA's assets. If the LLC owns the house and is properly maintained, the claim is generally limited to the LLC's assets, which insulates the rest of the IRA. Multiple LLCs, or an LLC with separate series of assets, can wall off one property from another.

Charging order protection running the other direction

Arizona gives the members of an LLC unusually strong protection from their own personal creditors. Under A.R.S. §29-3503, a charging order is the exclusive remedy by which a judgment creditor may reach a member's transferable interest in an Arizona LLC. The creditor cannot foreclose on the interest, cannot vote it, and cannot force a distribution. Here the member is your IRA, which already enjoys substantial creditor protection under federal and Arizona law, so the two protections stack.

Pooling

An LLC can have more than one member. Your IRA and your spouse's IRA can both own membership interests in the same company, in proportion to what each contributed, and buy a property neither could afford alone. So can an unrelated third party's IRA. Multi-member structures require careful drafting, and they raise disqualified person questions the moment a family member is involved, but they are a legitimate and common use of the structure.

Privacy

Public records show the property is owned by an LLC. They do not announce that the LLC is owned by your retirement account.

When You Do Not Need One

Not every self-directed IRA needs an LLC. If your IRA is going to make one passive investment and then sit still, the LLC adds cost and complexity for nothing. You do not need checkbook control to:

 

• Buy a single promissory note and collect payments for five years.
• Subscribe to a private fund, syndication or LP interest where the sponsor does all the work and sends a K-1.
• Buy raw land you intend to hold without improvements.
• Hold a single private company's stock.

The LLC earns its keep when the investment generates frequent transactions: rental real estate, fix and flip projects, private lending with multiple borrowers, tax liens and deeds, equipment leasing, or anything where the money must move faster than a custodian moves.

The Legal Foundation and the Cases That Define It

There is no statute that says "an IRA may own an LLC." There is also no statute that says it may not. The structure rests on the general rule that an IRA may invest in anything the Internal Revenue Code does not prohibit, combined with a line of Tax Court decisions that tell you exactly where the edges are. Four cases matter.

Swanson v. Commissioner, 106 T.C. 76 (1996) — the case that makes the structure possible

James Swanson directed his IRA to buy all of the newly issued stock of a corporation he formed, and he served as its president. The IRS argued that the purchase and the later dividends were prohibited transactions because Swanson controlled the company.

 

The Tax Court disagreed on both points. At the moment the IRA subscribed for the shares, the corporation had no shareholders and no assets, so it was not yet a disqualified person as to the IRA. There was no transaction between the IRA and a disqualified person because the entity was brand new. And the payment of dividends by a company the IRA already owned was not the fiduciary "dealing with the income or assets of a plan in his own interest" that the statute forbids. The court went further and awarded the taxpayer his litigation costs, holding that the government's position was not substantially justified.

 

Swanson is the foundation. It establishes that funding a newly formed entity that the IRA will own, and having the IRA owner serve as an officer or manager of that entity, is not by itself a prohibited transaction.

Ellis v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 2013-245, aff'd 787 F.3d 1213 (8th Cir. 2015) — do not pay yourself

Terry Ellis rolled roughly $320,000 into a self-directed IRA, which bought 98% of an LLC that operated a used car dealership. So far the structure looked like Swanson. Then Ellis went to work as the general manager of the dealership and the company paid him about $9,754 in one year and $29,263 in the next.

 

The Tax Court and the Eighth Circuit both held that this was a prohibited transaction under IRC §4975(c)(1)(D) and (E). The salary was an indirect transfer of the IRA's assets for the benefit of a disqualified person, because the money the company used to pay him came almost entirely from his IRA. Under IRC §408(e)(2), the account ceased to be an IRA as of the first day of that year, and the entire fair market value, $321,253, became taxable income. Accuracy-related penalties and the early distribution tax were tacked on.

 

He earned about $39,000 in wages and it cost him a $320,000 retirement account. That is the arithmetic of a prohibited transaction.

Peek v. Commissioner, 140 T.C. 216 (2013) and Thiessen v. Commissioner, 146 T.C. 100 (2016) — do not guarantee the loan

In both cases, taxpayers used self-directed IRAs to capitalize an entity that bought a business, and in both cases the sellers wanted personal guarantees on the purchase notes. The taxpayers signed.

 

A personal guarantee is an extension of credit between a disqualified person and the plan, prohibited by IRC §4975(c)(1)(B). It does not matter that the guarantor never paid a dime under the guarantee. It does not matter that the guarantee benefited the IRA rather than the individual. Peek added a second lesson that stings: the prohibited transaction was deemed to occur in the year of the guarantee, but because the accounts stopped being IRAs at that point, the gain realized later when the business was sold was fully taxable to the individuals.

McNulty v. Commissioner, 157 T.C. No. 10 (2021) — do not take possession

Donna McNulty's self-directed IRA owned an LLC. She served as manager, and the LLC used its checkbook to buy American Eagle gold and silver coins. She then took the coins home and put them in a safe in her house. Her reasoning was that the LLC owned the coins, she was merely the manager, and the manager has to keep the company's property somewhere.

 

The Tax Court rejected that completely. IRC §408(m)(3) allows an IRA to hold certain U.S. coins and bullion only if a bank or approved trustee has physical possession. An IRA owner who takes personal custody of IRA-owned assets receives a taxable distribution, and inserting an LLC between the IRA and the coins changes nothing. The full value of the coins was taxable in the years received, and accuracy-related penalties applied because her reliance on the promoter's website and a general accountant was not reasonable cause.

 

The broader principle reaches past gold. McNulty stands for the proposition that the LLC does not launder the transaction. If an IRA could not do it directly, the LLC cannot do it either.

Prohibited Transactions Under IRC Section 4975

Everything above traces back to one statute. IRC §4975 is short, and every IRA/LLC owner should be able to recite the two lists in it.

List one: who is a disqualified person

• You, the IRA owner, and any fiduciary of the account.
• Your spouse.
• Your ancestors: parents, grandparents and up the line.
• Your lineal descendants: children, grandchildren and down the line, and the spouse of any lineal descendant. Note the asymmetry. Your son-in-law is disqualified; your son's father-in-law is not.
• Anyone providing services to the plan, such as the custodian or the accountant who values it.
• Any entity in which disqualified persons own, directly or indirectly, 50% or more of the voting power, capital interest or beneficial interest.
• Officers, directors, 10% or more shareholders, and highly compensated employees of any such entity.

Who is not on the list is just as important. Your brothers and sisters are not disqualified persons. Neither are aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews or stepchildren who are not lineal descendants. Your IRA can, in principle, lend money to your sister. It cannot lend a nickel to your daughter.

List two: the six prohibited acts

Between a plan and a disqualified person, the statute forbids any direct or indirect:

 

1. Sale, exchange or leasing of property. You cannot sell your own rental house to your IRA/LLC, and the LLC cannot sell a property to your daughter.
2. Lending of money or other extension of credit. This is the guarantee trap from Peek and Thiessen. It also means you cannot advance your own money to cover an LLC expense, not even for a week, not even if you pay yourself back with no interest.
3. Furnishing of goods, services or facilities. You cannot swing a hammer on the IRA's rehab, cannot mow the IRA's lawn, and cannot store the IRA's equipment in your garage.
4. Transfer to, or use by or for the benefit of, a disqualified person of the income or assets of the plan. This is the broadest of the six and the one Ellis turned on.
5. Any act by a fiduciary dealing with the income or assets of the plan in his own interest or for his own account. Self-dealing, stated in general terms.
6. Receipt of any consideration for the fiduciary's own personal account from any party dealing with the plan in connection with a transaction involving the plan's income or assets. No referral fees, no kickbacks, no commissions.

The consequence

For an IRA, the consequence is not an excise tax. It is annihilation. Under IRC §408(e)(2), if the owner engages in a prohibited transaction, the account stops being an IRA as of the first day of that taxable year, and the entire fair market value on that first day is treated as distributed to the owner. Retroactive to January 1. The whole account, not just the tainted portion.

 

Then the additions pile on. Ordinary income tax on the full balance, which by itself usually pushes the taxpayer into the top bracket. A 10% additional tax under IRC §72(t) if the owner is under 59½. Accuracy-related penalties. State income tax. And the loss of every future year of tax-deferred growth.

The Collectibles Trap: IRC Section 408(m)

IRC §408(m) treats an IRA's acquisition of a collectible as an immediate distribution of the amount used to buy it. Collectibles include artwork, rugs, antiques, gems, stamps, most coins, alcoholic beverages and any other tangible personal property the IRS designates. There is a narrow exception for certain U.S. gold, silver, platinum and palladium coins and for bullion meeting exchange-contract fineness standards, but the exception applies only if the coins or bullion are in the physical possession of a trustee that meets the requirements of §408(a).

 

That last clause is what sank McNulty. A home safe is not a trustee. A safe deposit box rented in your own name is not a trustee. An LLC managed by you is not a trustee. If your IRA/LLC is going to hold precious metals, they belong in an approved depository, titled to the LLC, with a written storage agreement, and you should never handle them.

 

The same principle disposes of the vacation-property question that comes up constantly. Your IRA/LLC can own a condo in Sedona. Nobody in your family may spend a single night in it, not even at market rent, not even in the off season. The moment a disqualified person uses IRA property, you have a §4975(c)(1)(D) problem regardless of what you paid for the privilege.

UBTI and UDFI: When Your IRA Owes Income Tax

Tax-exempt does not mean tax-free in all circumstances. Two rules can generate a real tax bill inside an IRA, and both are easier to trip over in a checkbook-controlled account because you are the one choosing the deals.

Unrelated business taxable income

Under IRC §§511 through 514, a tax-exempt entity pays tax on income from a trade or business it regularly carries on that is unrelated to its exempt purpose. Passive income is generally excluded: interest, dividends, royalties, rent from real property, and gain on the sale of investment property.

 

Where IRA/LLC owners get caught is flipping. An LLC that buys, rehabs and resells four houses a year is not making passive investments; it is running a dealer business, and the profit is UBTI. So is operating a restaurant, a laundromat or a used car lot inside the LLC. UBTI is taxed at trust rates, which reach the top bracket at a very low income level, so the bill arrives fast.

Unrelated debt-financed income

IRC §514 pulls otherwise-exempt income back into tax to the extent the property producing it was acquired with borrowed money. If your IRA/LLC buys a $400,000 rental with $160,000 of cash and a $240,000 nonrecourse loan, roughly 60% of the net rental income and 60% of the gain on sale is unrelated debt-financed income.

 

Two points people miss. First, the loan must be nonrecourse, because a recourse loan requires a guarantee and a guarantee from you is a prohibited transaction. Second, an IRA does not get the exception that a qualified plan gets for debt-financed real property, so a solo 401(k) may be the better vehicle for leveraged real estate. That is a decision to make before you form anything.

 

When UBTI or UDFI exceeds $1,000 in a year, the IRA must file its own Form 990-T and pay the tax from IRA funds. Not your funds. Paying the IRA's tax bill personally is itself a prohibited contribution.

Arizona LLC Law Issues Unique to an IRA/LLC

Formation mechanics

An Arizona LLC comes into existence when the Arizona Corporation Commission approves Articles of Organization filed under A.R.S. §29-3201. The filing itself is inexpensive and expedited processing is available for a modest additional fee. The Articles must name a statutory agent with an Arizona street address who has signed a statutory agent acceptance.

 

One useful Arizona quirk: under §29-3201(G), the newspaper publication requirement does not apply when the statutory agent's street address is in a county with more than 800,000 people. That means Maricopa and Pima counties. Our firm's statutory agent address is 24 W. Camelback Road, Suite 467, Phoenix, AZ 85013, which is in Maricopa County, so companies we form do not incur publication cost or delay.

 

Arizona does not impose an annual report or annual franchise fee on LLCs, which makes it an unusually cheap state in which to maintain a special-purpose entity like this one for decades.

Who signs, and how

Every document the LLC signs should read: Sunburst Holdings LLC, an Arizona limited liability company, by Jane Investor, its Manager. Never "Jane Investor" alone. Never "Jane Investor, Owner." Signing in your individual capacity is the kind of sloppiness that gives the IRS an argument that you, not the IRA, were the real party to the transaction.

Single member versus multiple members

An IRA/LLC with one member, the IRA, is a disregarded entity for federal income tax purposes. It files no income tax return of its own; its activity is attributed to the IRA. If the IRA has UBTI, that flows onto the IRA's Form 990-T.

 

Add a second member and the company becomes a partnership by default, which means an annual Form 1065 and a K-1 to each member's IRA. That is not a reason to avoid multi-member structures, but it is a cost and a compliance obligation to plan for. It also creates a hard drafting problem: if your IRA and your spouse's IRA together own the company, the two of you jointly control 100% of it and every disqualified-person analysis becomes more delicate.

The LLC's assets are IRA assets

Because the IRA owns the whole company and the company is not an operating company, the U.S. Department of Labor's plan asset regulation, 29 C.F.R. §2510.3-101, treats the LLC's underlying assets as assets of the plan. IRAs are not ERISA plans, but §4975 borrows these concepts, and the practical consequence is direct: you are a fiduciary as to everything the LLC owns. There is no argument that the LLC is a separate business with its own interests. Every restriction that applies to the IRA applies to every asset in the LLC.

Why a Standard Operating Agreement Will Not Work

A.R.S. §29-3105 lets the operating agreement govern the relations among the members and the activities of the company, and where it speaks, it generally overrides the default statutory rules. That flexibility is what makes it possible to write an agreement suited to an IRA-owned company. It also means that a generic form downloaded from a website will govern your IRA, badly.

 

A properly drafted IRA/LLC operating agreement should contain, at a minimum:

 

• Correct identification of the member. The custodian, as custodian for the named IRA, with the account number. Not the individual.
• An express prohibited transaction covenant. A flat prohibition on any transaction with a disqualified person as defined in §4975(e)(2), binding on the manager, so that an ultra vires act is void rather than merely unwise.
• A no-compensation clause. The manager serves without salary, fee, commission or reimbursement of personal time. This is the Ellis clause.
• A no-guarantee, nonrecourse-only borrowing clause. The company may borrow only on a nonrecourse basis and no disqualified person may guarantee, cosign or pledge collateral. This is the Peek and Thiessen clause.
• A custody clause. Tangible assets of the type described in §408(m) must be held by an approved depository and never by the manager. This is the McNulty clause.
• Prohibited-asset limits. No life insurance, no collectibles, no personal use by any disqualified person.
• Segregation of funds. Company funds in a company account only, no commingling with personal or business funds, and no personal advances.
• Manager removal by the member. The custodian, acting at the direction of the IRA owner or a successor, can remove and replace the manager. This matters at death and at incapacity.
• Distribution mechanics. How and when the LLC distributes cash back to the IRA, including the cash needed to fund required minimum distributions.
• An annual valuation obligation. Who obtains the year-end value and delivers it to the custodian.
• Dissolution on disqualification. What happens if the IRA is disqualified or the interest is distributed in kind.

Custodians vary in what they will accept. Many will not fund an LLC until their compliance department has reviewed the operating agreement, and some maintain a list of provisions they require. Getting the agreement right before the buy direction letter goes in saves weeks.

The Operating Rules: Do This, Never Do That

Do	Never
Title every asset in the LLC's exact legal name	Take title in your own name "temporarily"
Pay every LLC expense from the LLC bank account	Front an expense personally and reimburse yourself later
Deposit every dollar of income into the LLC account	Let a rent check clear through your personal account
Hire unrelated third-party contractors and property managers	Do the repairs yourself or hire your son's company
Serve as manager without pay	Take a salary, management fee, commission or expense stipend
Borrow only on a true nonrecourse basis	Sign a guarantee, cosign, or pledge personal collateral
Keep precious metals at an approved depository	Store anything the LLC owns at your home or office
Buy from and sell to unrelated parties only	Buy an asset you, your spouse, your parents or your children already own
Deliver a year-end fair market value to the custodian	Report the original cost year after year
Keep minutes, resolutions and a complete transaction file	Rely on memory and a shoebox of receipts
Ask a lawyer before an unusual transaction	Ask a forum, a promoter's blog, or a friend who "did this once"

There is no cure once the transaction happens. The IRS has a correction program for qualified plans and the Department of Labor has an exemption process, but neither restores an IRA that has already been deemed distributed under §408(e)(2). Prevention is the only remedy.

How to Set Up an Arizona IRA/LLC

1. Decide whether you need one. Frequency of transactions is the test. If the IRA will make one passive investment, skip the LLC.
2. Decide traditional or Roth, and decide it early. A Roth IRA/LLC that buys an appreciating asset produces tax-free growth under IRC §408A, and Roth IRAs have no lifetime required minimum distributions for the original owner. If you are converting, convert before the asset appreciates, not after.
3. Pick a self-directed custodian that permits IRA-owned LLCs, and ask what it requires in the operating agreement before you draft anything.
4. Move the money by trustee-to-trustee transfer. Do not take a check.
5. Form the LLC. Articles of Organization, statutory agent acceptance, and a custom operating agreement written for IRA ownership.
6. Obtain the LLC's EIN. We get the LLC's EIN when we form an IRA LLC.
7. Submit the buy direction letter instructing the custodian to purchase 100% of the membership interests for a stated dollar amount, and have the custodian wire the funds to the LLC.
8. Open the bank account in the LLC's name with its own EIN, and fund it only from the custodian's wire.
9. Invest, and document everything. Keep contracts, closing statements, insurance policies, leases and bank statements in one place.
10. Calendar the annual valuation and, if applicable, the Form 990-T deadline.

Leave enough cash in the LLC account. An IRA/LLC that is fully invested with no reserve is a problem waiting to happen, because the only lawful sources of new money are additional IRA contributions routed through the custodian and additional funds from another IRA. You cannot write a personal check to save a deal.

 

For 2026 the maximum annual IRA contribution is $7,500, plus a $1,100 catch-up for those age 50 and over. That is the ceiling on how much new money you can add each year, and it goes to the custodian first, never straight to the LLC.

Getting Out: Sales, Distributions, RMDs and Death

Selling the asset

The LLC sells the property. The proceeds go into the LLC's account. Nothing is taxable, because the LLC's owner is a retirement account. The LLC can reinvest immediately or distribute the cash up to the IRA. There is no need for a 1031 exchange inside an IRA, and attempting one adds cost for no benefit.

Required minimum distributions

A traditional IRA owner must begin taking required minimum distributions at the age set by current law, and the RMD is calculated on the value of the IRA, which includes the value of the LLC interest. This is where illiquidity bites. If the LLC owns a single rental house and holds almost no cash, the IRA may not have the money to make the distribution. The fix is planning: keep cash in the LLC, distribute cash up to the IRA before year end, or hold other liquid assets in the same IRA. A distribution in kind of a fractional LLC interest is possible but requires a defensible appraisal and creates a mess of partial ownership.

Distribution of the LLC interest itself

An IRA can distribute the entire LLC membership interest to the owner. The interest's fair market value is the taxable distribution amount for a traditional IRA, or a tax-free distribution from a qualified Roth. After the distribution, you own the LLC personally, the §4975 restrictions fall away, and you can finally repair the roof yourself.

Death

The IRA beneficiary designation controls, not your will and not your trust unless the trust is the named beneficiary. Under current law most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty an inherited IRA within ten years, which is a difficult schedule when the only asset is a building. Whoever inherits the account also inherits the manager problem: someone has to be authorized to run the LLC on day one. Coordinate three documents at the same time — the beneficiary designation, the operating agreement's manager succession provisions, and your revocable living trust. An estate plan that ignores a self-directed IRA is an estate plan with a hole in it.

Hire Us to Form Your Arizona IRA/LLC

Arizona LLC attorneys Richard Keyt and his son, attorney and former CPA Richard C. Keyt, have formed 10,000+ Arizona LLCs, including 350+ self-directed IRA LLCs. We know how to form an LLC that a self-directed IRA custodian will actually fund, with an operating agreement written for IRA ownership rather than a generic form that ignores IRC §4975.

 

Our flat fee to form an Arizona self-directed IRA LLC is $1,997. The fee includes:

• Unlimited phone consultations with Richard Keyt before and after formation
• Entity name availability check
• Articles of Organization prepared and filed with the Arizona Corporation Commission
• Federal employer identification number (EIN) for the LLC
• Our 170+ page Arizona LLC Operations Manual
• A custom 40+ page IRA LLC operating agreement signed through DocuSign
• First year of statutory agent service
• Organizational resolutions and a membership certificate
• The IRS statutes and regulations that govern IRA LLCs, plus Richard Keyt's article on prohibited transactions
• A tabbed three-ring binder containing all of your LLC documents

To hire us to form your IRA LLC submit our online questionnaire at keytlaw.com/irallcq. If you have questions first, call Richard Keyt at 480-664-7478 or email him at rk@keytlaw.com. You may also book a free telephone or Zoom meeting on our calendar.

 

If you need a standard Arizona LLC rather than an IRA-owned LLC, see the fees and contents of our 3 LLC Formation Packages and submit our questionnaire at keytlaw.com/llcq.

 

This article is general information about Arizona and federal law and is not legal or tax advice. Reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Self-directed IRA rules are unforgiving and the facts of your situation control the answer. Consult an attorney and a tax advisor before forming or funding an IRA-owned LLC. © 2026 KEYTLaw, LLC. All rights reserved.