Glossary for Savings Bonds Terms
# A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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- 1099-INT
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The 1099-INT is an IRS form that lists the amount of interest a taxpayer earned on a specific investment or investments during the year. You need 1099-INTs for all of your investments that paid you taxable money to calculate your taxes and to send in with your tax return.
Note: You only get a 1099-INT if you actually got the interest on a savings bond. If you are waiting until your EE or I bond matures (finishes its life) to take the interest on it, you will not get a 1099-INT for that bond until we actually pay you the interest.
If you have a TreasuryDirect account, you must get your 1099-INT yourself from your account. If we have taxable interest to report to the IRS for you, your 1099-INT will be ready during January.
If you have linked accounts in TreasuryDirect, such as an account for your child and you are taking the interest on savings bonds in that account, be sure to get the 1099-INT for that linked account. You use that for the child’s tax return.
If you have cashed paper savings bonds, you will receive a 1099-INT in the mail. If you have paper HH savings bond that pay you interest every six months, you will also get a 1099-INT in the mail.
Tax information for EE and I bonds
A
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- Administered estate
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When someone dies, what they owned must be distributed according to their will or the law. That is called “settling the person’s estate.”
In some cases, a law court is involved and a judge appoints the person who is responsible for settling the estate. That person is the administrator for the estate and the estate is considered to be “administered.”
- Administrator
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The court-appointed person settling an administered estate of someone who has died.
- Affected by a disaster
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A “disaster” here means a situation such as an area-wide fire, flood, or hurricane that resulted in an official state or federal declaration as a disaster. If that has happened to you, we can offer special help with your savings bonds.
- Attorney-in-fact
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You can give someone else the right to act for you. Someone else can give you the right to act for them. The written and signed statement giving those rights is called a “power of attorney. The person giving someone else the right to act for them is the grantor. The person who has the right to act on behalf of someone else is an “attorney-in-fact.”
- Automated clearing house (ACH)
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A secure system for transferring money electronically. When we deposit money directly into your bank account, it goes through ACH. When you send money to us electronically to put into your TreasuryDirect account or to pay for a savings bond, it goes through ACH.
B
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- Bank
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When we use the word “bank,” we are including banks, credit unions, savings and loans, trust companies, and other financial institutions where you can put money in (deposit money) and take money out.
- Bank account type
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Most banks offer you 2 types of bank account: checking or savings. You can send us money from either type. You can ask us to send your money (deposit it) to either type.
- Beneficiary
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When you register a savings bond (tell us who owns the bond), you may also tell us who will inherit the bond (own it after you die). The person who becomes the owner after someone dies is the “beneficiary” for that bond.
When a bond includes a beneficiary, the bond is registered with the words “payable on death” or the letters POD. For example, “Jane Smith Payable on Death to John Smith.” Jane now owns the bond. John is the beneficiary.
If you did not include a beneficiary when you first bought the bond, you can add one later.
Registering your savings bonds (Who owns them)
Add a secondary owner or a beneficiary (TD How do I?)
Changing information (reissue) EE or I
- Bond
- See Savings bond
C
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- Certificate of Indebtedness (C of I)
- See Zero-Percent Certificate of Indebtedness
- Certification
- See Signature certification
- Certified copy
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When we ask for a certified copy, we need a copy of the original legal document that has a raised or impressed seal and also has statements about the accuracy and authenticity of the document.
- Certifying officer
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An officer or other employee of a financial institution, such as a bank, trust company, or credit union, who is expressly authorized by the institution to certify or guarantee signatures.
- Child
- See Minor
- Co-owner
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Two people can jointly own a savings bond. The co-owner is the person whose name comes second. The co-owner is sometimes known as the secondary owner.
For electronic bonds, we show co-ownership with the word WITH. For example,
“LESLIE DOE SSN xxx-xx-6789 WITH DANA DOE SSN xxx-xx-4321.” Leslie is the primary owner. Dana is the co-owner (secondary owner).For paper bonds, we show co-ownership with the word OR. For example,
“LESLIE DOE OR DANA DOE.”Both owners have rights to act on the savings bond — for example, to cash the bond or change the beneficiary.—and in some cases can act without the other’s knowledge or approval.
Registering your savings bonds (Who owns them)
Add a secondary owner or a beneficiary (TD How do I?)
- College
- See Higher education tax exclusion
- Compound interest
- See Interest (compound)
- Consumer price index (CPI)
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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics collects data on how the cost to urban (city) consumers for goods and services changes over time. They publish the data as the CPI-U (consumer price index for all urban consumers).
We use the CPI-U to calculate the next 6-month combined interest rate for Series I savings bonds. We also use it to adjust what you earn on one of our Treasury marketable securities: Treasury Inflation-Protected Security (TIPS).
- Converting
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When you change your paper savings bonds to electronic ones and put them in your TreasuryDirect account, you are “converting” them from paper to electronic.
Converting paper to electronic bonds
Convert paper EE and I savings bonds to electronic bonds (TD How do I?)
- Court-appointed representative
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When someone dies, what they own must be distributed according to their will or the law. That is called “settling the person’s estate.”
In some cases, state law or the amount the deceased person owned means that a court appoints the person to be in charge of settling the estate. That is a “court-appointed representative.” And we say that the estate is being “administered.”
- Current redemption value
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Redemption means the act of cashing a bond. The current redemption value (CRV) is what the bond is worth at a specific time if you were to cash it at that time.
- Custom-linked account
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In your TreasuryDirect account, you can create specific (sub)accounts for special purposes. These are “custom” accounts that you link to your main account.
One specific type of linked account is a linked minor account for a child under 18. In that linked account, the child is the owner of the bonds.
In other linked accounts, you own the bonds. You are just keeping them separate for a specific purpose. For example, you could set up a custom linked account called Savings for a Big Vacation.
D
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- Delinking
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A child who is 18 years old may have their own TreasuryDirect account. If you have had an account for that child linked to your main TreasuryDirect account, you can move all the child’s savings bonds and other Treasury securities to their new personal account. We call that process “delinking” the minor’s linked account.
Delink a minor's account (TD How do I?)
A minor’s linked account is the only custom linked account that can be “delinked.”
- Deferred interest
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“Deferred interest” applies only to special cases for some HH savings bonds.
This is different from the action of putting off (deferring) interest on an EE or I bond. For that, see Tax deferral.
If your HH bond says “deferred interest” on the front of the bond, you may be interested in this explanation: That means the new HH bond was bought by trading in another bond and using the interest that other bond had earned to help pay for the new HH bond.
At that time, the buyer had the option of paying the tax on that interest then or putting off paying the tax on that interest until later. The buyer took the option of putting off paying the tax.
- Deferring interest
- See Tax deferral
- Deflation
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Deflation is the opposite of inflation. When the cost of goods and services goes up so that the same amount of money buys less, we have inflation. When the cost goes down, we have deflation.
The interest you earn on Series I savings bonds (as well as on the Treasury marketable security, TIPS – Treasury Inflation-Protected Security) can change every 6 months depending on inflation and deflation. We guarantee that the interest rate on I bonds will never be lower than zero.
- Delivery
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When you move a gift savings bonds from your TreasuryDirect gift box to the person you are gifting the bond to, we say you are “delivering” the bond.
You must wait 5 business days after buying a gift bond in TreasuryDirect before you deliver the bond. We do that to be sure that the money you used to buy the gift bond has successfully gone through the banking system from your bank account to us.
- Denomination
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For a paper savings bond, “denomination” is the dollar amount on the front of the bond. For example, a paper I bond that you can buy with your IRS tax refund comes in 5 denominations: $50, $100, $200, $500, and $1,000.
Other words we use for denomination are “face amount” or “face value.”
- Direct deposit
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When the money someone owes you goes into your bank account without going to you first as cash or a check, that money is being “deposited directly” into your account.
TreasuryDirect makes payment to you by direct deposit. You give us the information we need when you open your account.
If you want to change where we directly deposit money for you, you can add or change your bank information.
E
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- E bond
- See Series E savings bond
- EE bond
- See Series EE savings bond
- Education
- See Higher education tax exclusion
- Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)
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EFT is the process of moving money electronically. When we deposit money directly into your bank account, that is an example of EFT. When you put money into your TreasuryDirect account directly from your bank, that is an example of EFT. If you set up a Payroll Savings Plan with your employer, your employer send us money by EFT.
- Employer Identification Number (EIN)
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Individuals have a Social Security Number (SSN). Businesses and other “entities” such as a trust or the estate of someone who has died have an Employer Identification Number (EIN). Both are types of a Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN). The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) assigns EINs.
- Entity account
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An entity account in TreasuryDirect is opened and managed by a person on behalf of an “entity” such as a business (including a sole proprietorship), trust, or the estate of someone who died. The rules for what you can and cannot do in an entity account differ somewhat from the rules for a personal account.
For information on the types of “entities” that can and cannot have an account in TreasuryDirect: Learn more about entity accounts
- Estate
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When someone dies, what that person owns must be distributed according to the person’s will or the law. What the person owns is that person’s “estate.”
- Executor
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The executor of an estate is the person who is in charge of carrying out the directions and requests in the will of someone who died. Usually, the person who died named the executor in their will.
- Extended maturity period, extension period
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Paper EE savings bonds were originally sold for half of their face value. You paid $25 for a $50 savings bond. Over time, they earned enough money to be worth their face value. If they continued to earn interest after that, they were (are) in an “extended maturity period,” also known as an “extension period.”
Today, you buy EE bonds electronically for their actual face value. So the phrases “extended maturity period” and “extension period” don’t apply to new EE savings bonds.
F
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- Face amount, face value
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The dollar amount that you see on the front of a paper savings bond.
- Final maturity, final extended maturity period
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The point at which a savings bond stops earning interest.
- Financial institution
- See bank
- Fixed rate
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Fixed means “stays the same.” So, a fixed rate of interest means you get the same percentage interest every time. For their first 20 years, new EE savings bonds pay a fixed rate of interest that you know when you buy the bond. The rate may change after 20 years. Series I savings bonds pay a combination of a fixed rate and an inflation rate.
G
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- Gift bond
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A savings bond that you buy for someone else. The person you give the bond to owns the bond. You do not own it.
- Grantee, Grantor
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In TreasuryDirect, you may give someone else the right to see (View) or act on (Transact) one or more of your savings bonds. When you do that, you are granting them those rights. You are the “grantor.” The person you let View or Transact for that savings bond is the “grantee.”
You can also be the “grantor” in other situations. For example, you can give (grant) someone the right to act for you in other specific ways by signing a “power of attorney.” The person who gets the right to act for you through a signed power of attorney statement is called an “attorney-in-fact.
- Guaranteed minimum rate
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Guaranteed minimum rate applies to savings notes, E bonds, and EE bonds that we issued before 1995. If you have one of those bonds from that period, it had a minimum interest rate that we guaranteed then but that could have changed later.
- Guardian
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The person who can legally act on behalf of someone who cannot take care of their own affairs.
H
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- Heir
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The person who inherits or is entitled to inherit property (such as savings bonds) after someone dies. Either the written will of the person who died or the law says who is the heir for someone’s savings bonds.
- HH bond
- See Series HH savings bond
- Higher education tax exclusion
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This applies only to interest from EE or I savings bonds with issue dates of January 1, 1990 and later.
You may be able to exclude that interest from your federal income tax if you use the money to pay certain educational expenses. You can use it to pay for tuition and required fees (but not room, board, or books) for yourself, your spouse, or your legally dependent children at a college, university, or qualified technical school.
The expenses must be in the same year that you get the interest. The exclusion is only available to you if your adjusted gross income (AGI) on your tax return is less than the maximum the IRS sets each year.
Also, the owner of the bond at the time the bond is bought must be 24 years or older. So, if you want to use the interest years later for someone who is now a child, you must register the bond in your (adult) name and not make the child the bond owner.
I
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- I bond
- See Series I savings bond
- Income limits for higher education
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Each year, the IRS sets a maximum adjusted gross income (AGI) for taxpayers who can use the interest on their savings bonds to pay for some college, university, or technical school education. See more in higher education tax exclusion.
- Inflation
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When the cost of goods and services goes up over a period of time, your money buys less. That is inflation. Series I savings bonds protect you from inflation because we consider inflation when we adjust the rates for those bonds every 6 months.
- Inflation-protected savings bond
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Series I savings bonds protect you from inflation. Their interest rate combines a fixed rate and an inflation rate. We use the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers to set the inflation rate every 6 months.
- Interest
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Money you get for lending someone money. When you buy a savings bond, you are lending money to the U.S. Treasury. The amount of interest you get depends on how much money you lent the government (the value of your savings bond) and the interest rate (percentage) that is set for those bonds.
- Interest (compound)
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Compound interest means that the interest you earn is added to the value of your savings bond. Then, the next interest payment is on the sum of the old value plus the previously earned interest.
New EE and I savings bonds earn interest every month. Every 6 months, we add that interest to the value of your bond and then use that new value as the basis of your interest payments for the next 6 months.
- Interest (simple)
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With simple interest, the money you get is always based on the initial value of the bond.
HH bonds earn simple interest. You get the same amount of money in each interest payment.
- Interest rate
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The interest rate determines how much money your money earns. We specify interest rates as percentages.
For example, if you lend someone $100 at a simple interest rate of 5 percent a year, at the end of one year, that person owes you $5.00 in interest.
With a savings bond that pays compound interest at 5 percent a year, you would get a little more than $5.00 in interest for the year.
- Issue date
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The issue date of a savings bond is the month and year when we issued it. The date is printed in the upper right corner of a paper bond and shown in TreasuryDirect for an electronic bond.
- Issue price
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What you pay to buy a savings bond.
For all the savings bonds we sell now, the issue price is the face value of the bond. For example, a $50 bond costs you $50, and that’s the issue price of that bond. (We used to sell some savings bonds at half their face value. For those earlier bonds, when a $50 bond cost $25, the issue price was $25.)
L
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- Legal representative
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Legal representative is a general term for someone whom a court appointed to act on behalf of either
- someone has been declared unable to handle their own affairs, or
- the estate of someone who has died
Examples of legal representatives include administrators, executors, guardians, and personal representatives.
For more about legal representatives related to the death of a savings bond owner, see Court-appointed representatives.
- Linked accounts
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In your TreasuryDirect account, you can create specific (sub)accounts for special purposes.
Two specific types of linked account are a
- minor linked account for a child under 18
- conversion linked account for converting your paper savings bonds to electronic bonds
You can also set up custom linked accounts for whatever special purpose you have for particular bonds, such as Saving for the Big Vacation.
- Linked conversion account
- See Converting
- Linked custom account
- See Custom linked account
- Linked minor account
- See Minor linked account
- Long-term rate
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“Long term rate” applies only to Series EE savings bonds that we issued from May 1, 1995 through April 1997. Those bonds earned a different interest rate during their first 5 years (their “short-term rate”) than they earned after their first 5 years (their long-term rate).
Interest rates for EE bonds issued from May 1995 through April 1997
M
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- Manifest
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When you convert your paper savings bonds to electronic bonds and put them in a TreasuryDirect account, you create a list of those bonds. We call that the “manifest” for your bonds. You must mail the manifest to us with the paper bonds so we can finish the process of getting the bonds into your TreasuryDirect account.
Convert paper EE and I savings bonds to electronic bonds (TD How do I?)
- Mature, maturity, maturity date
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A savings bond reaches maturity when its term expires. Series EE and Series I savings bonds have terms of 30 years. Series HH savings bonds have a term of 20 years. You can cash a bond before it matures.
A savings bond earns interest until it matures or you cash it, whichever comes first.
- Minor
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A child under the age of 18.
- Minor linked account
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A child under the age of 18 may not have their own TreasuryDirect account. They cannot buy, hold, or cash savings bonds.
However, as the parent, legal guardian, or the person who provides the chief support for a child, you may set up an account for that child and link the account to your main TreasuryDirect account.
Using the minor’s linked account, you may buy, hold, and cash savings bonds for the child. The child is the owner of the savings bonds in that minor linked account. For tax purposes, the interest on those bonds goes on the child’s tax return.
You can have a separate minor-linked account for each child.
When the child reaches 18 years of age, the child can have their own TreasuryDirect account. You can then move all the savings bonds and other Treasury securities that are in the minor’s linked account into their own account. We call that “delinking” the minor’s account.
N
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- Non-administered estate
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When someone dies, that person's estate (what the person owns) must be "settled" – distributed according to the person's will or the law. If settling the estate does not involve supervision by a court of law and no court appoints a legal representative to administer the estate, that is a non-administered estate.
O
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- Original maturity period
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This does not apply to I bonds. Interest rates for I bonds can change every 6 months (to protect you from inflation). The formula for figuring that interest rate does not change over the life of the I bond.
This also does not apply to HH bonds, which earn the same fixed rate for their entire life.
However, it does apply to current EE bonds, as well as some older series. For those savings bonds, we can change the rate part way through the bond’s life. For example, for EE bonds bought since May 2005, we may change the interest rate or the way the bond earns interest for the last 10 years of its life.
The time in which the original interest rate or way of figuring the interest applies is called the “original maturity period.”
- Owner
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The person who is either the only person named on a savings bond or the person whose name comes first. The act of naming who owns a savings bond is called “registering the bond” or “registration.”
When one person owns a paper savings bond, that person is the “single owner.”
When one person owns an electronic savings bond, that person is the “sole owner.”
A savings bond may have 2 owners. The person who is named second is the “co-owner.”
We sometimes call the first named person the “primary owner” and the second named person the “secondary owner.”
A co-owner may take all the actions that the owner can take with the savings bond. If a co-owner is named on the bond, the co-owner becomes the owner when the first-named owner dies.
Instead of naming a co-owner (secondary owner), the owner of a savings bond may instead name a beneficiary. The beneficiary has no rights to do anything with the savings bond while the owner is alive. The beneficiary becomes the owner when the first-named owner dies.
P
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- Payroll savings plan
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With a payroll savings plan, you buy savings bonds automatically on a regular schedule using part of each paycheck.
You decide how much of each paycheck to put towards savings bonds. Your employer sends that amount from each paycheck by direct deposits to Treasury.
You also decide what savings bond you want (EE or I) and the cost of each bond you want. When you have enough in your account to buy the savings bond you specified, we automatically put that bond in your TreasuryDirect account.
Buy savings bonds through our Payroll Savings Plan (TD How do I?)
- Power of attorney
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“Power of attorney” is the name for a written and signed statement in which someone gives someone else the right to act on their behalf. The person giving the right is called the “grantor.” The person getting the right is called the “attorney-in-fact.”
- Primary account
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Your main account in TreasuryDirect. From your primary account, you may link other accounts, such as an account for a child (minor linked account),a special account for any purpose you want (custom linked account), or an account that you use to convert paper savings bonds to electronic bonds (conversion linked account, converting).
- Primary owner
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The person whose name comes first on a savings bond.
Example: “Leslie Jones SSN 123-45-6789 WITH Sam Jones SSN 987-65-4321.”
Leslie is the primary owner. The primary owner may let the second-named person see (View) and act on (Transact) the savings bond.
- Principal, principal amount, principal value
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The cost of the savings bond. For savings bonds that you can buy today, the principal amount, purchase amount, face amount, and face value are the same.
- Purchase limitations
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How much you can spend on savings bonds in a calendar year. For dollar amounts, see “Purchase Limits” in the Research Center.
- Purchase schedule
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In your TreasuryDirect account, you can tell us that you want to buy a particular type of savings bond for a particular amount on a regular schedule: monthly, quarterly, or on specific dates that you list. That is your “purchase schedule.”
R
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- Rate
- See Interest rate
- Recipient
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“Recipient” is the noun from the verb “receive.” The recipient is the person who gets something from you. In TreasuryDirect, that could be
- the person who gets a gift savings bond from you
- the person to whom you transfer a savings bond
- the 18 year old who gets the bonds from their minor linked account when you delink that account
- Redeem, redemption
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“Redeem” means “to cash the bond.”
- Registering, registration
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The registration for a savings bond tells who owns it. It may also say who co-owns it or who will get it when the owner dies (the beneficiary).
On a paper bond, you see the registration (name, address, and social security number or employer identification number) on the front of the bond.
For an electronic bond, you see the registration in your account.
To understand the options for registering your savings bonds, see Registering your savings bonds (Who owns them).
- Reissuing, reissue
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In a few situations when you change something about a savings bond, the change is so important that we must issue the bond again with the change. That means you give up the old bond and get a new one in its place. The new bond is the same series (EE, HH, or I), with the same issue date, the same maturity date, and the same value.
If the savings bond has matured (is no longer earning interest), we will not reissue it. You might consider cashing it.
If the question about reissuing is because the owner of the savings bond has died, see Death of a savings bond owner.
Otherwise, to see which situations require (and don’t require) reissuing, see
Changing information (reissue) EE or I
Changing information (reissue) HH
Reissuing a savings bond may have tax consequences. If we are reissuing a savings bond to change who owns it, the original owner may need to pay taxes on the interest the bond earned before the reissue.
- Replacing, replacement
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When you report that a paper savings bond is lost, stolen, destroyed, or you did not get it when you should have, we cannot replace a bond that has reached final maturity; payment would be made instead. We can issue substitute Series HH bonds, but EE/I substitute bonds will always be issued in electronic form if they are more than one year old.
Get help for a lost, stolen, or destroyed EE or I savings bond
- Reportable taxable event
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Some actions related to your savings bonds require us to report to the IRS that you had income that should be included on your tax return. Examples: interest payments, reissues because the owner changed.
We report to the IRS with a 1099-INT.
Tax information for EE and I savings bonds
- Request date
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In TreasuryDirect, the request date is the date you set for us to take a specific action (a transaction) for you. If we cannot carry out the transaction on your request date because that is a weekend, holiday, or not a transaction processing time, we do it on the next business day or the next transaction processing time.
- Routing number
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The 9-digit number that identifies your bank or other financial institution. It is sometimes called the ABA number.
On most checks, the routing number is in the bottom left corner.
S
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- Savings bond
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Savings bonds are a way that you loan money to the U.S. government. In turn, the government guarantees that you will not lose money on that loan. You earn interest on the money you loan to the government through savings bonds.
- Second-named registrant, secondary owner
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The person whose name comes second for a savings bond you have in your TreasuryDirect account. The registration uses WITH to join the names.
Example: “Leslie Jones SSN 123-45-6789 WITH Sam Jones SSN 9876-54-321.”
In this example, Leslie is the first-named registrant and the primary owner. Sam is the second-named registrant and the secondary owner. The savings bond is in Leslie’s TreasuryDirect account. Leslie may give (grant) Sam the right to just see (View) or to see and act on (View and Transact) the savings bond. If Leslie does not give Sam those rights, only Leslie can change or cash the savings bond.
- Security
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To make something secure is to keep it from danger or risk.
When speaking of finances, a security is a document that promises to repay a loan.
When you buy a security from the U.S. Treasury, you loan money to the government. The government in turn gives you a document as security (as a promise) that they will repay the money you lent and, usually, that they will pay you extra money (interest) for letting them use your money.
At the U.S. Treasury, we offer 2 main types of securities:
- savings bonds
- Treasury marketable securities (“marketable” means you can sell them later)
At this time, you may buy Series EE or Series I savings bonds. Although you can’t buy new Series HH savings bonds, some are still earning interest. You may also have savings bonds or savings notes from older series. If so, they are no longer increasing in value, so you may want to cash them. See Cashing old bonds from other series.
For more about our other type of securities (marketables that you buy through an auction), see the separate Marketables Glossary.
- Series EE savings bond
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- A Series EE bond pays a fixed rate of interest.
Once you buy an EE bond, your fixed rate does not change for at least the first 20 years of the bond’s life. (We may change the rate for the bond’s last 10 years.)
Every May and November, we announce the rate of interest for EE bonds that you buy in the next 6 months.
Your new EE bond earns interest at that rate every month.
Every 6 months, we add the past 6 months of interest to the principal (the then-current value) of your bond. In the next 6 months, your fixed rate of interest is calculated on the new (increased) value of your bond. We explain this more under Interest (compound).
We also guarantee that if you still own your EE bond after 20 years, it will be worth double its initial value.
Today, you must have an account in our free online program, TreasuryDirect, to buy and hold an EE savings bond.
You must keep an EE savings bond for at least 1 year. If you cash the bond before it is 5 years old, you lose the last 3 months of interest.
Interest rates for EE bonds bought 2005 and later
We have sold EE bonds since 1980. Some older EE bonds earn (earned) interest in different ways. If you have an EE bond that was bought before 2005, check the main EE bonds page for a link to the page about interest for bonds that were bought in the year of your bond.
- Series HH savings bond
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We no longer sell HH savings bonds but some haven’t matured yet. They earn interest for 20 years,. Interest is paid directly to the owner every 6 months.
- Series I savings bond
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We introduced Series I bonds as a way to protect your money from inflation.
- A Series I bond earns interest at a rate that combines a fixed rate and an inflation rate.
The interest rate for your Series I bond may change every 6 months.
Every May and November, we announce the combined rate of interest that I bonds bought in the next 6 months will earn for the first 6 months you own the I bond.
Your new I bond earns interest at that rate every month for 6 months.
Every 6 months, we add the past 6 months of that combined interest to the principal (the then-current value) of your bond. In the next 6 months, your I bond earns interest on the new value of your bond.
We calculate and announce the new combined rate every May and November.
You must keep an I savings bond for at least 1 year. If you cash the bond before it is 5 years old, you lose the last 3 months of interest.
You can buy paper I bonds with your IRS tax refund. Otherwise, you must have an account in our free online program, TreasuryDirect, to buy and hold an I savings bond.
- Short-term rate
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This applies only to Series EE savings bond that we issued from May 1, 1995 through April 1997. Those savings bonds earned a different rate in their first 5 years than they earned after that. Short-term rate for their first 5 years. Long-term rate after that.
Interest rates for EE bonds issued from May 1995 through April 1997
- Signature certification
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In some situations where you are asking for money from us or asking us to do something relating to your savings bonds (such as changing who owns them or who will get them after you die), we need to be sure that you (and not someone else) is signing the form. We require you to have your signature “certified.” That means you sign the form in front of an official of a bank or other financial institution, or in some cases in front of a notary, showing that person proof of your identity.
- Simple interest –
- See Interest (simple)
- Single owner, sole owner
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When one person owns a savings bond (with no co-owner or secondary owner), that person is the single owner or sole owner. We tend to use “single owner” for paper bonds and “sole owner” for electronic bonds. They mean the same thing.
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The 9-digit number that identifies you as an individual for your tax return and other official documents. You get your SSN from the Social Security Administration.
You may see these abbreviations:
- EIN for Employer Identification Number (also sometimes FEIN with F for Federal)
- SSN for Social Security Number
- TIN for Taxpayer Identification Number
TIN is a general term where we mean either an EIN or an SSN, whichever is appropriate for the type of account you have or transaction you want to do.
An EIN identifies a business and some other types of entities. ( See entity accounts.)
As an individual, you have an SSN for your tax returns and other documents.
Your Social Security Number is the key identifier for your account in our online program, TreasuryDirect, where you keep your electronic savings bonds and other Treasury securities. (Many people may have the same name, but each has a unique Social Security Number.)
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- Tax deferral
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With a Series EE or Series I savings bond, you can choose to pay tax on your interest every year or you can defer payment—put it off—until you receive the interest. You don’t receive interest until the first of these events: you cash the bond, we reissue the bond in a way that is a reportable taxable event, or the bond matures.
Tax information for EE and I savings bonds
With HH savings bonds, tax deferral isn’t an option. You receive interest twice every year.
- Tax form
- See 1099-INT
- Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN)
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A Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) is either a Social Security Number or Employer Identification Number.
- Transact rights
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In TreasuryDirect, when 2 people are named as owner and secondary owner on a savings bond, the person who is named first may give the second-named person the right to act on the savings bond.
The person giving the rights is the grantor. The person getting the rights is the grantee.
With Transact rights, the grantee may cash the savings bond.
You cannot give or get Transact rights to a Zero-Percent Certificate of Indebtedness, which is an interest-free holding place for money in your TreasuryDirect account.
- Transfer
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Transfer means “to move.”
You may want to transfer savings bonds for various reasons, including moving
- all or part of a savings bond from one TreasuryDirect account to another:
Transfer savings bonds to another TreasuryDirect account (TD How do I?) - convert paper EE or I bonds to electronic bonds
Convert paper EE and I savings bonds to electronic bonds (TD How do I?)
- all or part of a savings bond from one TreasuryDirect account to another:
- TreasuryDirect
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TreasuryDirect is our web-based program for buying, holding, and managing your electronic savings bonds and other Treasury securities.
- TreasuryDirect account
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In TreasuryDirect, you have a personal account with all your electronic savings bonds and other Treasury securities. You can link your main account to one or more (sub)accounts, including
- a minor-linked account for a child
- custom-linked accounts for specific purposes you decide on
- a conversion account when you turn (convert) paper savings bonds into electronic bonds
- Trust, trustee, trustor
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A trust is a legal entity where one person is in charge of property (such as savings bonds) with the obligation to use that property for the benefit of someone else.
The person who is in charge of the trust is the trustee. The trustee manages or administers the trust.
The person (or sometimes an institution or organization) that creates the trust is the trustor. Other words for the trustor are maker, donor, grantor, settler.
Trusts are a type of entity that may have an entity account in TreasuryDirect. The trustee opens and manages the entity account for a trust.
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- U.S. savings bonds
- See Savings bonds
- Undelivered payment
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When it is time to send you money, we use the information we have from you to send that money to your bank or other financial institution. If the payment does not go through and is returned to us, it becomes an “undelivered payment. When a payment is returned to us, we contact the payee and make arrangements to re-transmit the payment using corrected ACH instructions.
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- Variable interest rate
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Variable means “it changes.”
Therefore, a variable interest rate is the opposite of a fixed rate.
For savings bonds that you can buy today, only Series I bonds have a variable interest rate. The interest rate for I bonds may change every 6 months.
Some earlier issues of EE bonds also had a variable rate. But EE bonds that you can buy now have a fixed rate of interest.
- View rights
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When you give someone View rights to a savings bond in TreasuryDirect, that person can see information about that savings bond. However, without Transact rights, they cannot do anything with the savings bond.
If you are the sole owner of the savings bond, you may give anyone who has a TreasuryDirect account View rights to that savings bond.
If you own a savings bond that also has a named beneficiary, you may give View rights to that savings bond to the beneficiary but not to anyone else.
If you are the first-named person (primary owner) on a savings bond with a named co-owner, you may give View rights for that savings bond to the second-named owner but not to anyone else. That is the only situation in which you can give someone (the second-named owner) Transact rights as well as View rights.
When you give rights, you are the grantor. The person who gets the rights is the grantee.
You cannot give or get View rights to a Zero-Percent Certificate of Indebtedness, which is an interest-free holding place for money in your TreasuryDirect account.
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- Withholding, withholding rate
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You may be used to having an employer send some of your income to the IRS so that you are paying some of the tax you will owe before it is due. Your employer is “withholding” money from your pay, sending it in for you, and thus lowering the amount you will need to have on hand to pay your taxes later.
We can help you in the same way: When you will owe tax on the interest you earn from your savings bonds, you can ask us to withhold some of the money and pay it to the IRS on your behalf.
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- Zero-percent certificate of indebtedness (C of I)
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A certificate of indebtedness is a special type of security in your TreasuryDirect account. It does not earn interest (thus, zero-percent).
It is a holding account where you put money to pay for savings bonds and other Treasury securities.
You can put money in your C of I from your bank account. You can use your C of I as the place for us to put money we owe you when you cash a savings bond or a savings bond matures (finishes its interest-earning life).
You can send money from your C of I to your bank account.
If you have a Payroll Savings Plan, the money your employer sends from each paycheck goes into a special Payroll Savings Plan C of I in your TreasuryDirect account. We then draw from that special C of I whenever it has enough money to buy the savings bond you told us to buy for you.