Your first question, ATS or Baird & Co both sell gold coins.
On tax. I just spoke to Adrian Ash at Bullion Vault – the company doesn’t sell coins and he was keen to stress that he isn’t a tax adviser – but he said these were the issues:
As far as he knows there is no import duty on gold - we’ll check that.
But, in the UK, the issue is money laundering. If any one buys gold worth more than £5000 in the UK their details – photo of passport and home address – are kept on record for six years. It is unclear how this check on laundering is maintained if the gold is bought outside of the UK, we’ll look at that too.
He said that any government would be concerned about lots of expensive metal crossing its borders but HMRC might not be quick to provide answers to these questions – apparently its gold team was disbanded in 1999 when VAT on gold was ended. Again, this is something we will look at.
Otherwise capital gains tax is the only worry for investors and this will apply to UK investors wherever the gold is held.