Equity Trust vs STRATA Trust for a Texas Gold IRA

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What each company actually is

Both Equity Trust and STRATA Trust are self-directed IRA custodians. Neither sells coins, endorses dealers, or sets premiums. Each one holds legal title to your IRA assets, executes the buy and sell instructions you sign, and files the annual tax paperwork with the IRS.

Equity Trust Company sits at 1 Equity Way, Westlake, OH 44145, with a main phone line of (855) 233-4382 (source: trustetc.com contact page, checked July 2026). The predecessor business was established in 1974 by the Desich family, and the IRS approved it as a custodian in 1983 per the trustetc.com footer note.

STRATA Trust Company sits at 901 S MoPac Expressway, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78746, with a main phone line of (866) 928-9394 (source: stratatrust.com structured data, checked July 2026). The company was founded in 2008 as Self Directed IRA Services, Inc. by Horizon Bank, SSB in Waco, Texas, and rebranded to STRATA Trust Company in 2017.

Both custodians also hold non-metals alternative assets. The metals piece is a subset of the total book at each firm. The custodian mechanics are the same across asset classes; only the fee tier changes when the asset mix changes.

Charter and regulator, side by side

Under 26 U.S.C. section 408(a)(2), an IRA can only be custodied by a bank, a federally insured credit union, a state-chartered trust company, or an IRS-approved non-bank trustee (source: cornell.edu/uscode/408, checked July 2026). Both Equity Trust and STRATA fall in the state-chartered trust company bucket, but they sit under different state regulators.

STRATA is a Texas-chartered trust company, regulated by the Texas Department of Banking under the Texas Finance Code (source: stratatrust.com About page, checked July 2026, and dob.texas.gov). The Texas Department of Banking runs periodic examinations, sets capital rules, and enforces fiduciary conduct standards for trust companies chartered under Texas law.

Equity Trust is a South Dakota-chartered trust company, described that way on its own trustetc.com About page. South Dakota chartered trust companies are supervised by the South Dakota Division of Banking under state law, subject to periodic examinations and capital rules set by that regulator (source: dlr.sd.gov/banking/, checked July 2026).

Both charters are legitimate. Neither is "safer" as a matter of federal law. What differs is the geography and the political culture of the supervisor. A Texas resident who wants a same-state supervisory relationship gets that with STRATA. A Texas resident who is fine with an out-of-state trustee gets a much larger operational book with Equity Trust.

Reported scale in the public record

Equity Trust is the larger custody book by an order of magnitude. Its trustetc.com homepage reports 368,000 self-directed accounts, with clients in all 50 states, and 73 billion dollars in assets under custody and administration (source: trustetc.com, checked July 2026). The About page adds a "Celebrating 50 Years of Service" line, consistent with the 1974 founding date.

STRATA reports smaller but still substantial figures on its own homepage: 48,000-plus investors served, 10 billion dollars-plus in assets under custody, and 350-plus years of collective staff experience (source: stratatrust.com homepage, checked July 2026). The About page adds that the business exceeded 1 billion dollars in assets under custody in 2014, then 3 billion dollars in 2021, and 7 billion dollars-plus by the 2025 timeline entry.

Scale numbers on custody platforms move quarter to quarter. Treat both sets of figures as the point-in-time snapshot each website carried when this page was written. The rank ordering between the two custodians has been stable across the recent captures we have on file.

Scale is not a rating of quality. A large custody book means the trust company has processed a very large number of intake forms, tax filings, and buy orders. It does not tell you whether the coin priced into your account was a fair deal. That decision belongs to the dealer conversation, not the custodian conversation.

Fee posture and transparency

This is the wedge where the two custodians differ the most visibly. STRATA publishes a full fee schedule at stratatrust.com/resource-center/strata-fees/, organized in two account tiers plus a common processing block. The Precious Metals tier annual account fee is 150 dollars and the Flex tier is 395 dollars, both effective September 1, 2026 (source: stratatrust.com fee schedule, checked August 2026). STRATA phased out the earlier Basic tier in the current schedule.

Storage on top of the STRATA Precious Metals account fee is 115 dollars per year for commingled or 175 dollars per year for segregated. Per-transaction fees include 40 dollars per metals buy or sell, 35 dollars for depository handling and processing, and 35 dollars for outgoing wires. Account closure is 250 dollars. Every line is on the public schedule.

Equity Trust also publishes a fee schedule at trustetc.com/resources/fee-schedule/. When we tried to fetch that page in August 2026, the response was blocked by a browser challenge, which is the same behavior other automated readers report on trustetc.com. Because we could not read the current schedule live, we do not print specific Equity Trust dollar figures on this page. Ask the intake specialist to state each line in writing.

Neither custodian is doing anything unusual by charging setup, annual account, per-transaction, and storage fees. The difference is that STRATA lets you compare the exact numbers before you speak to anyone, while Equity Trust asks the reader to go through the intake conversation to receive the fee packet. Fee transparency is a preference; both models are legal.

Annual carrying cost on a 100,000 dollar Texas rollover

The chart below shows a like-for-like annual carrying cost on a 100,000 dollar gold IRA with commingled storage. Only the recurring items are shown, so the setup fee, per-buy transaction fees, wire fees, and the dealer premium on the coins themselves are all excluded. This is a floor cost, not a total cost.

For STRATA, the recurring annual carrying cost stacks the 150 dollars Precious Metals tier account fee and 115 dollars commingled storage into 265 dollars per year (schedule effective September 1, 2026). On a 100,000 dollar balance, that is 0.27 percent. On a 250,000 dollar balance, the same recurring 265 dollars is 0.11 percent. Flat-fee custody shrinks in percentage as the balance grows.

For Equity Trust, we can only show the storage bar honestly because the custodian portion is not on the fetchable schedule. Ask the Equity Trust intake specialist for the specific annual custodian fee under your account tier in writing. Add that number to whatever the depository quotes for commingled storage under your buy instruction to get the full recurring line.

Use the calculator below to model the effective fee drag on your own numbers once you have both quotes side by side. Replace the placeholders with the actual figures each custodian's intake specialist gives you in writing, plus any dealer premium and expected wire charges over the years you plan to hold.

Storage options for Texas readers

Neither Equity Trust nor STRATA physically holds IRA metal. Each one is the trustee of record; the physical bars or coins are held at an IRS-approved third-party depository chosen at intake. Both custodians work with most of the well-known depositories in the U.S. market, and the specific depository is written into the buy instruction you sign.

The depositories that show up most often on dealer paperwork that names either custodian include Delaware Depository in Wilmington, International Depository Services (IDS) with a vault in Irving, Texas, Brinks Global Services with multiple U.S. sites, A-M Global Logistics in Nevada, and the state-owned Texas Bullion Depository in Leander. TxBD is the only state-administered and state-audited precious metals depository in the United States, established by Texas law in 2015 and operated since 2017 by Lone Star Tangible Assets.

Storage segregation matters at intake. Segregated storage means your specific bars or coins sit under your name and you can get back the exact pieces you shipped in. Commingled storage means you own a claim on like-kind metal from a pooled inventory.

Under STRATA fees, segregated is 175 dollars per year and commingled is 115 dollars per year, both effective September 1, 2026 (source: stratatrust.com fee schedule, checked August 2026). Equity Trust depository fees are set by the depository itself, so ask which depository and which segregation option before you sign.

The Texas angle for each custodian

Texas has no state personal income tax on wages or on retirement account distributions (source: Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, checked July 2026). Rollover events, RMDs, Roth conversions, and early withdrawals are taxed at the federal level only. That is true for a Texas resident whether the trustee is STRATA, Equity Trust, or any other IRS-approved custodian.

STRATA is a Texas-chartered trust company with an Austin address. If you specifically want the supervisory relationship to sit inside Texas, STRATA is the clean pick between these two. The Texas Department of Banking runs the periodic examinations, and the corporate footprint sits within the same state as the customer.

Equity Trust is a South Dakota trust company with an Ohio corporate address. That is not a defect. A trust company chartered outside of Texas can and does serve Texas residents every day, and there is no Texas residency requirement for the custodian. What Equity Trust does not offer is an in-Texas charter comfort. Its edge is scale and a broader alternative asset menu under one trustee.

For readers who want the custodian, the depository, and the metal all inside Texas, the STRATA plus Texas Bullion Depository plus IRA-eligible bullion combination is a fully in-state configuration. With Equity Trust, the metal can still route to TxBD in Leander through IDS Irving or TxBD directly, but the trustee itself sits in Ohio under a South Dakota charter. Both configurations produce valid IRAs.

Who picks the custodian, the reader or the dealer

In most Texas gold IRA transactions, the dealer decides which custodian sits on the paperwork. The reader signs the intake bundle the dealer sends over, and the custodian named on the application is the custodian that opens the account. Some dealers pair with only one custodian; others let the reader pick from a shortlist.

Dealers that name Equity Trust on their paperwork include American Hartford Gold, among others. Dealers that name STRATA on their paperwork include several precious metals firms that focus on the Texas market. Neither list is exclusive; both custodians appear on many dealer intake packets nationally.

Ask the dealer, before signing anything, which custodian is on the intake form and whether any other custodian is offered as an alternative. If the answer is "we work with X only," that is fine, but you should know it before you have already handed over rollover paperwork. The trustee choice is not trivial.

If you have a preferred custodian and the dealer will not accommodate, that is a signal to reconsider the dealer, not the custodian. Both Equity Trust and STRATA are widely recognized in the industry, and dealers that refuse to work with either are locking you into their own back office relationships. Do not accept "our system only supports one" as a final answer without asking why.

Service model and processing times

STRATA publishes operational disclosures that Equity Trust does not surface as prominently on the public site. STRATA writes on its About page that 95 percent of investment transactions are processed within 24 hours, and that the typical processing window is 24 to 48 hours. The site also reports that 70 percent of staff sit in client-facing roles, and that the average phone wait time is under 1 minute (source: stratatrust.com About page, checked July 2026).

Equity Trust operates a client portal branded myEQUITY and routes prospective client calls through an IRA counselor line. Operational speed disclosures at that level of specificity are not on the trustetc.com public pages we captured in July 2026. Ask the intake specialist for the current service level agreement on order execution and on phone wait time in writing.

Neither disclosure guarantees fast execution on a specific order. Custody platforms run under exception queues, and the actual timing on a given wire depends on the counterparties involved. The published figures are averages, and the actual worst-case timing on a Friday afternoon wire cutoff can differ from either firm's headline number.

For a Texas reader who wants faster typical execution and clearer public disclosures, STRATA carries the more transparent posture on this dimension. For a reader who values operational depth from a larger back office over headline speed numbers, Equity Trust has the larger book and the longer institutional record.

Tax paperwork each custodian files for you

Both custodians file the IRA tax paperwork the IRS requires. Form 5498 is filed each year to report the fair market value at year end and any contributions received. Form 1099-R is filed when a distribution occurs, including a rollover distribution out of the IRA. You will still owe your own Form 1040 filing and any Form 8606 basis-tracking filing that applies; consult your tax advisor.

STRATA charges 100 dollars per corrected 5498 or 1099-R and 50 dollars per asset for a Roth conversion or recharacterization event, per its public fee schedule (source: stratatrust.com fee schedule, checked August 2026). Equity Trust likely bills for corrected tax forms too, though the specific dollar figure was not on the fetchable schedule; ask at intake.

Save each year's Form 5498 the moment the custodian issues it in May, then match it against the year-end fair market value shown on your December statement. That reconciliation is your only defense against a corrected 5498 fee later. Small paperwork discipline at the reader end pays off across a multi-year holding period.

Both custodians also file Form 990-T when the IRA generates unrelated business taxable income, which can happen with certain alternative assets but almost never happens with pure metals. If your intake specialist raises 990-T for a metals-only account, ask them to explain the specific fact pattern that triggered it before you sign anything.

Worked example: a Fort Worth 200,000 dollar rollover

How to decide between the two

1. Ask the dealer which custodian is on the paperwork. Some dealers pair only with Equity Trust; some pair only with STRATA; some offer a choice. Get the answer in writing before you sign anything.
2. Rank your criteria honestly. If in-state Texas charter matters most to you, STRATA is the closer fit. If a larger operational book and a broader alternative asset menu under one trustee matter most, Equity Trust is the closer fit.
3. Ask each intake specialist for the full fee packet in writing. Setup fee, annual account fee, per-transaction fees, wire fees, and closure fee. If a line is missing, that itself is useful information.
4. Ask for the specific depository and storage type on the buy instruction. Segregated or commingled, and the vault name. For Texas storage, ask specifically for IDS Irving or Texas Bullion Depository in Leander.
5. Read the disclosure text at each custodian. Both are directed (passive) custodians. Neither will police the dealer premium. That is the reader's job.
6. Confirm the rollover is trustee-to-trustee. A direct rollover avoids the 20 percent federal withholding trigger and the 60-day clock, under either custodian.
7. Keep a saved PDF of every quoted figure. Setup, annual, transaction, storage, and dealer premium per coin. This is the paperwork trail that protects you across the multi-year holding period.

When neither is the right fit for you

Frequently asked questions

Reviewed by Harry's Coins Editorial. Last reviewed August 2026.