Progress is continuing in the coin industry’s ongoing fight against unfair sales taxes. Two more states – Nebraska and Oklahoma – recently enacted legislation exempting coins and precious metals from such taxation.

According to the Industry Council for Tangible Assets (ICTA), 31 states currently grant at least partial sales tax exemptions to coins and precious metals or will do so soon. However, there’s no exemption in the other 19 states. So collectors and investors in those states are forced to pay substantial added fees for coins and precious metals while other investment vehicles – especially stocks and bonds – go untaxed.

Coin and bullion buyers have complained about this disparity for many years, with limited success. Recently, however, ICTA and its supporters have been making significant inroads by aggressively pressing state legislators to level the playing field. Since the start of 2013, at least four states have voted to eliminate the discriminatory taxes.

I worked closely with ICTA in getting such a rollback last year in my home state of Texas. I also assisted Paul Hollis, a fellow member of the ICTA Board of Directors, in achieving a similar legislative victory last year in Louisiana.

In spearheading the movement to rescind or block sales taxes, ICTA has made a persuasive case that doing so benefits not only coin and bullion buyers and sellers but also the states that take such action.

Beyond the element of fairness, ICTA argues convincingly that the loss of sales tax revenue is more than offset in tax-free states by the income those states derive from retaining healthy businesses that advertise extensively, encouraging new businesses and attracting major coin shows and auctions that otherwise might be held elsewhere.

I totally agree with this assessment. And I strongly encourage fellow members of the numismatic community to get behind ICTA as it pursues its laudable objectives in states where burdensome sales taxes haven’t yet been eliminated.

The notion of slapping a sales tax on transactions where money is the “commodity” being sold has always struck me as peculiar, implausible and even preposterous. Applying such tax to precious metals and bullion coins, which are substitute forms of money, is no less illogical.

If you’d like to donate time or money to further ICTA’s campaign to eradicate sales tax on coins and precious metals, visit the association’s website or call (410) 626-7005 for more information. ICTA has several categories of membership.

About the Author: Mike Fuljenz
Mike Fuljenz is a member of the Moneynews Financial Brain Trust. Click Here to read more of his articles. He is also the editor of the NLG award-winning Michael Fuljenz Metals Market Weekly Report.