I Bond Limits and the Gift Box: Delivery Year Is What Counts

Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: $10,000 in electronic I bonds per Social Security Number or Employer Identification Number per calendar year. The gift mechanism is the part worth understanding, and the rule that governs it is one sentence: a gift counts against the recipient’s limit in the year they receive it, not the year it was bought.

The Treasury forms for inherited and TreasuryDirect savings bonds, read line by line: FS Form 1455 (fiduciary distribution), FS Form 5188 (power of attorney for Treasury securities) and FS Form 1048 (lost, stolen or destroyed savings bonds).

I bond rate announcements: the November 2027 I bond rate, due November 1, 2027.

Current EE bond rates: EE bond rates and the fixed-rate history and the November 2026 EE bond rate.

More IRS forms and schedules, read line by line: Form 8815 instructions.

Price a bond by its issue month: I bond calculator.

The November 1, 2026 rate announcement: the November 2026 I bond rate, 5.51%.

The Treasury form for cashing a paper savings bond, with the cash-or-hold decision first: FS Form 1522 and the cash-or-hold decision.

Every rate announcement and how the combined rate is built: the current I bond rate and its fixed-rate history.

The rate for bonds issued from May 2027, before it is announced: the May 2027 I bond rate, due May 1, 2027.

The limit

$10,000 in electronic I bonds per Social Security Number or Employer Identification Number per calendar year. It is per identification number, so a couple has two allowances, and an entity such as a trust or a business has its own.

TreasuryDirect states that as of January 1, 2025, I bonds are only available electronically.

The gift box, and how the timing works

A bond can be bought for someone else and held undelivered in the buyer’s account. A gift bond held undelivered in the giver’s account does not count against anyone’s limit while it sits there. And on delivery: “The gift counts for that person’s limit in the year in which they get the bond.”

So the mechanism has a specific shape:

• Buying a gift does not use up the recipient’s allowance while it sits undelivered.
• Delivering it does, in the delivery year.
• A gift bought in one year can therefore be held and delivered in a later year when the recipient has room.
• It earns interest from the purchase month, not the delivery date — which is the whole reason the mechanism is interesting.

One procedural condition: “You must hold the savings bonds in your account for at least 5 business days before you deliver them to the gift recipient.”

The obvious limitation is equally important. Gift amounts are applied to the recipient’s purchase limit. TreasuryDirect states that there is no limit to the amount a recipient can receive, but that once a recipient has received $10,000, they should not purchase additional savings bonds that year. It also states that recipients are the sole legal owners as soon as the bonds are purchased and that holding undelivered gift bonds introduces potential complications.

Holding rules

“You can cash in (redeem) your I bond after 12 months.” There is no way out before then at all.

And between one and five years: “if you cash in the bond in less than 5 years, you lose the last 3 months of interest. For example, if you cash in the bond after 18 months, you get the first 15 months of interest.”

So the instrument has a hard twelve-month lock and a soft four-year one. Money that might be needed inside a year does not belong here at all, and money that might be needed inside five years pays a known, bounded price to leave.

The current rate

5.51% composite for I bonds issued 1 November 2026 through 30 April 2027, built from a 1.40% fixed rate and a semiannual inflation component.

The fixed component stays with the bond for its life; the inflation component resets every six months. Two I bonds bought in different months can therefore behave differently forever, which is why the purchase month is worth recording.

The rate was verified against TreasuryDirect on November 1, 2026; the other figures on this page were verified on September 29, 2026.

Related: when the interest is taxed · the education exclusion and why most people do not qualify.

Interest running from the purchase month rather than the delivery date makes the issue month the date the rest is measured from, including the two that decide when a bond can be cashed and what cashing it costs. The I bond cash-out timing tool takes that issue month and year, together with whether the bond’s newest six-month rate is higher or lower than the one before it, and returns the months the rate resets in, the earliest date it can be redeemed, the date the three-month interest penalty stops applying, and the best month to redeem in before that date.

General information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Rates and limits change; current terms are published at treasurydirect.gov. This page describes how these instruments work and makes no prediction about any investment.