Tennessee gold and silver money law

Tennessee Code Annotated Section 67-6-350 exempts the sale of all coins, currency, and bullion that are manufactured in whole or in part from gold, silver, platinum, palladium, or other material, are used solely as legal tender, a security, or a commodity in Tennessee, another state, the United States, or a foreign nation, and are sold based primarily on their intrinsic value as precious material or as a collectible rather than their representative value as a medium of exchange. There is no purity threshold and no dollar transaction minimum. That text is quoted from the enacted Public Chapter published by the Tennessee Secretary of State, not from an introduced bill. The Department of Revenue's own guidance confirms the exemption covers gold, silver, platinum, and palladium coins and bullion without a stated purity floor, and dates it from May 27, 2022.

Gold and silver are not recognized as legal tender in Tennessee as of the verification date above.

Tennessee has no tax on capital gains because it has no general individual income tax of any kind, not because of a precious metals specific carve out. The state's former Hall income tax reached only interest and dividend income, never capital gains generally, and the legislature phased it out through the end of 2020, repealing it fully for tax years beginning January 1, 2021, by ordinary statute. Article II, Section 28 of the Tennessee Constitution separately provides that "the Legislature shall not levy, authorize or otherwise permit any state or local tax upon payroll or earned personal income or any state or local tax measured by payroll or earned personal income," with a proviso preserving any tax in effect on January 1, 2011. That clause addresses earned income rather than investment gains, so the current absence of a capital gains tax rests on the Hall tax repeal, an ordinary statute, and not on a constitutional command.

Tennessee has not enacted gold and silver legal tender status, and it has no bullion depository. Bills to create one have been filed, and a 2016 House joint resolution is widely reported to have expressed the legislature's support for the idea, but this record cannot describe any of them from a source it was able to read. The Tennessee General Assembly's bill system at capitol.tn.gov refused connections outright from this environment and from an independent fetch attempt, at the TCP layer rather than with an error page, and the aggregator mirrors that carry the same records were also unavailable. Rather than cite pages it could not load, this record leaves Tennessee's pending and failed legislation undescribed and records only what reachable official sources support. Note the practical point in any case: a joint resolution states a position, it does not create an agency, authorize spending, or bind a future legislature, so even a resolution passed unanimously would not put a depository in force. Nothing in the enacted Tennessee law reached through this research recognizes gold or silver as legal tender.

Tennessee's sales tax treatment of bullion is settled law, unlike its legal tender status. Senate Bill 1857 of 2022, sponsored by Senator Frank Niceley with Representative Bud Hulsey carrying the companion House bill, added T.C.A. Section 67-6-350, exempting the sale of coins, currency, and bullion made from gold, silver, platinum, palladium, or other material from sales and use tax, so long as the item functions solely as legal tender, a security, or a commodity, and sells for its intrinsic or collectible value rather than as a medium of exchange. The statute carries no purity threshold and no dollar minimum. The enacted Public Chapter, published by the Secretary of State, records passage on April 28, 2022 and bears the line "APPROVED this 27th day of May 2022, BILL LEE, GOVERNOR"; because the act takes effect upon becoming law, the Department of Revenue dates the exemption from that same day.

Tennessee has no capital gains tax, but that follows from the state having no general income tax at all rather than from any precious metals specific rule. The old Hall income tax reached only interest and dividend income and was phased out by the legislature through the end of 2020, fully repealed for tax years starting January 1, 2021. The state constitution separately bars the legislature from levying or permitting any state or local tax "upon payroll or earned personal income or any state or local tax measured by payroll or earned personal income," saving any such tax in effect on January 1, 2011. That provision does not by its terms reach investment gains, so it was the ordinary statutory repeal of the Hall tax, not a constitutional command, that closed the door on taxing capital gains from selling bullion or anything else.