Tastyworks Is Now Making Naked Calls Available In IRAs

Nope. UBTI is not relevant as this is securities trading. Here is the problem simply. You've maxed out your contribution for the year and your short call get's exercised and a debit exists that exceeds your available cash. You liquidate to pay the loan - may be OK, but definitely not worth to going to tax court. Your call get's exercised and your net debit after selling out everything and used all your free cash. What does your broker do ? Lend you money on your IRA - taxable event and really ugly consequences and they are required to report. It' text book - you sold a call on a $10 stock - let's say they require 2X in cash to cover(btw this where the profitability to the firm will come in - on the interest rate spread on the cash). Stock get a takeover offer at $35 or gaps open to $35. You now have a unsecured debit in the IRA and you have a limit on contributions.
Your link shows what TDA allows for an IRA with limited margin, not what is possible and allowed under the law. If you think an IRA is not allowed to borrow money (from a bank or broker, not you personally), please post a link to the IRS guidance or IRC.

I understand that using margin or various short options you can end up losing more money than you have, which is obviously bad. I recall one guy here had that happen at IB and they took money from his personal taxable account to meet the obligation (gotta read the fine print on your account agreements; they had the right to), which left him dealing with likely tax penalties for excess IRA contributions.

https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/margin-call-on-an-ib-ira-account-need-suggestions.51251/

In short, there are risks and there are consequences but I've seen nothing to say that these types of trades in an IRA are illegal, just rarely supported. Here's a review of what your shouldn't do/own, and shorting or margin or short options are nowhere on that list.

http://www.irafinancialgroup.com/prohibitedtransactions.php
 
"As you are aware, if an IRA engages in a prohibited transaction, the IRA ceases to be considered an IRA, with the resultant loss of its tax-exempt status, pursuant to Code section 408(e)(2)."

This is only a couple of lines, but you can bring up the IRS code captioned. This can be a nightmare.
 
Two things:

1. Contributions
I agree your ability to contribute additional funds is limited. You can overcontribute if you want to meet the deficiency, but you'll pay an excess contribution tax of 6%/year on that amount until you forgo making that much in normally allowed contributions down the road. This isn't prohibited or disqualifying, just moderately expensive, and probably the right choice for a deficiency that's up to a few times the $5500 annual contribution limit.

In addition, if your IRA goes negative, it's not clear to me, absent a right of offset for you having personal non-IRA assets held with the same broker they can seize, that the broker has legal recourse to your personal funds in this case. They could sue your IRA, but if it's broke that doesn't get them anything. They could sue you, but you aren't guaranteeing the IRA (that's not allowed, and it's a separate legal entity anyway), so I would suspect they would have a hard time winning. They would have to argue there is an implicit guarantee that everyone has to backstop their IRA, which would be a prohibited transaction even if it wasn't invoked, so all IRAs should be invalid. I don't think that would fly...

2. Prohibited transactions
It's only prohibited to borrow or extend credit to an IRA under these rules if it's done by a disqualified person. That list includes the IRA owner, most immediate relatives, and any fiduciary to the IRA. Fiduciaries here are people given investment discretion over the account, so your broker, unless you're letting him make discretionary trades in your account or paying him for investment advice, would not be disqualified. In short, having an unrelated third party like your broker make an arms length non-recourse loan to your IRA is not a prohibited transaction. Examples of this already in common use involve IRAs owning investment rental properties and getting a mortgage.

https://www.theentrustgroup.com/investments/real-estate/strategies/non-recourse-loans

And a cautionary article from one of the IRA experts still mentions IRA loans are allowed under appropriate terms and conditions:
https://www.financial-planning.com/news/steer-clear-of-these-taboo-ira-investments
"When an IRA needs to borrow funds in order to purchase IRA assets, that loan must come from outside financing, without a personal guarantee from the IRA owner."

I guess you should to read the margin agreement for an IRA very carefully to make sure you weren't making a personal guarantee by accident, but I doubt a broker's lawyers would let them write that into the contract since it would blow up any IRA that agreed to it even if it wasn't used.
 
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