Leverage with options and UBTI

Trading on margin in qualified retirement accounts is considered debt-financed income and therefore leads to UBTI (unrelated business income tax) / UBIT.

Many other forms of leverage (futures, short sales, gains from lapse or termination of short options, repurchase agreements, notional principal contracts) are either explicitly exempt in the code from generating UBTI, or don't generate UBTI by virtue of entailing no borrowing of money in the traditional sense.

What about using the proceeds from options sales (for example options box spreads) on a rolling basis to buy additional equities, will it generate UBTI? Is it debt-financed income, as the short options create an obligation (albeit the size of the future obligation depends on the performance of the underlying); or not, as (by the same argument that applies to futures) it does not entail borrowing money in the traditional sense?

Could this be viewed a potential PT since the assets in the retirement account are being used as something like a collateral?

On 12/16/2021 at 4:00 PM, JOH said:

Could this be viewed a potential PT since the assets in the retirement account are being used as something like a collateral?

I do not understand lookatmytaxes' transaction well enough to comment on the UBTI issue, but as long as the "leveraged" investments are for the retirement account itself, and not for its owner or some other third party, it should not be a PT.