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 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.

The paper-bond-via-tax-refund channel was not re-verified this session and no figure is published for it.

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: “The giver 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. A recipient with a full allowance in a given year cannot receive the gift that year, so a large gift box delivers over several years and the recipient cannot buy their own during those years without going over. That is a real constraint, not a technicality.

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

4.26% composite for I bonds issued 1 May 2026 through 31 October 2026, built from a 0.90% 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.

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 drawn from IRS, Medicare, HUD and state statute and regulation, not legal, tax or financial advice. Continuing-care law is state law and differs materially between states; every figure here is year-labelled and every source named. Fiduciary licensing, executor compensation and intestacy are STATE law and differ change. Rates and limits are year-labelled and move; verify current terms at treasurydirect.gov before acting. Nothing here is a prediction or a recommendation about any investment – it describes how these instruments work.