Vermont gold and silver money law

Vermont has no exemption of any kind for precious metal bullion or investment coins, and this record confirmed that directly rather than assuming it from the absence of contrary reporting. The state's sales and use tax exemption statute, 32 V.S.A. Section 9741, lists every category of exempt sale in numbered subdivisions running past thirty; none of them mentions bullion, precious metals, coins, or currency. The Department of Taxes' own Sales and Use Tax Regulations go further and settle the question affirmatively rather than by omission: Regulation 1.9701(7)-1, defining "tangible personal property," lists at paragraph A.5, as an example of property that is taxable, "precious metals such as bullion, ingots, and wafers," immediately after paragraph A.4, which places numismatic coins purchased other than as a medium of exchange in the same taxable category. The regulation's paragraph B carves out only one narrow exception: coins or stamps purchased and used as an actual medium of exchange or postage, meaning an ordinary currency-for-currency transaction, such as a bank exchanging bills for an equal-value roll of coins, is not a taxable "sale" because nothing of greater value changes hands. That exception does not reach an investment or collector purchase of bullion or coin priced above face or metal-melt value, which is the transaction this record tracks, and Vermont taxes such a purchase at the state's standard 6 percent sales tax rate like any other retail sale of tangible personal property.

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

Vermont has no capital gains exemption specific to precious metal bullion or coins. Vermont taxes capital gains as ordinary income within its graduated individual income tax. A general, non-bullion-specific mechanism could reduce the effective rate on a long-held bullion gain: Regulation 1.5811(21)(B)(ii) allows a taxpayer to subtract either the first 5,000 dollars of adjusted net capital gain income, or 40 percent of adjusted net capital gain income from assets held more than three years, from federal taxable income in arriving at Vermont taxable income. That 40 percent exclusion is unavailable for gains on a primary or non-primary residence, on depreciable personal property other than farm property or standing timber, and on publicly traded stocks and bonds, none of which describes bullion, so a long-held bullion gain is not categorically excluded from the mechanism the way it would be for those three asset classes. This is a general capital-asset provision available to any qualifying gain, not a bullion-specific exemption, so this record does not classify Vermont as offering a capital gains exemption for precious metals.

Vermont is the plainest of this batch's three counterexamples: unlike Washington and Maryland, it has never had a bullion sales tax exemption to repeal. This record confirmed that by reading Vermont's own exemption statute rather than by trusting the absence of a documented repeal. 32 V.S.A. Section 9741 lists every category of sale exempt from Vermont sales and use tax, in numbered subdivisions running well past thirty; none of them touches bullion, precious metals, coins, or currency of any kind. The Department of Taxes' own regulations answer the question affirmatively rather than leaving it to inference from that silence. Regulation 1.9701(7)-1 defines "tangible personal property" and includes, as an express example of taxable property, "precious metals such as bullion, ingots, and wafers," placed directly alongside numismatic coins purchased other than as a medium of exchange, both taxable. The regulation carves out only one exception, coins or stamps purchased and used as actual currency or postage, an ordinary equal-value exchange rather than an investment purchase, which does not reach the bullion and coin sales this site tracks. Vermont taxes those sales at its standard 6 percent rate like any other sale of tangible personal property.

Vermont is not without legislative activity on this question, just without any legislative success. At least two bills, House Bill 295 in the 2023-2024 biennium and House Bill 711 in the 2025-2026 biennium, would have created a bullion and coin investment exemption modeled on the kind other states already have. Both were referred to the House Ways and Means Committee on introduction and neither has ever received a committee vote, let alone a floor vote in either chamber, according to each bill's own official status page. House Bill 711 was still sitting in committee, with no action recorded since its January 16, 2026 referral, as of this record's verified date. Vermont has never enacted a legal tender law for gold or silver and has no state bullion depository.

Several secondary sources describe a Vermont bullion exemption "set to take effect July 1, 2026," language this record traced to House Bill 711's own proposed effective date clause, the date the bill states it would take effect if enacted. A bill's stated future effective date is not evidence that the bill has passed, and the Vermont General Assembly's own bill status page for H.711 shows no vote of any kind, in either chamber, as of the most recent action on record. Vermont's general sales tax and income tax guidance pages at tax.vermont.gov returned HTTP 403 to every direct fetch attempted this session through this record's automated tools; the two Department of Taxes PDFs cited above, the Sales and Use Tax Regulations and the Capital Gains Exclusion regulation, were successfully retrieved with a standard browser user agent via a direct request, and both loaded and were read in full, so this record does not treat tax.vermont.gov as unreachable in the way ncleg.gov and capitol.tn.gov were on earlier states in this project; the block appears specific to certain access patterns rather than to the host generally.