By Eric Gunn, Wisconsin Examiner
Legislation that would give a sales tax exemption to the sale of coins and precious metal bullion will go to the state Senate Tuesday after winning a bipartisan recommendation in the Legislature’s budget committee Monday.
The bill, AB-29, passed the Assembly on a bipartisan 86-12 vote Feb. 20, and Monday, March 11, one Democrat on the Joint Finance Committee voted with the Republicans to recommend the bill to the full Senate.
Advocates for the legislation argue that coins and precious metal are investments and so should not be subject to sales taxes under Wisconsin law.
“Charging a sales tax on a form of money is fundamentally unfair, and has the effect of treating precious metal bullion as though it is merely a commodity,” Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) testified at a Senate hearing on the bill Jan. 31. Stroebel is the author of the Senate companion bill.
Constituents who trade in coins and bullion have “contacted me off and on over the years in support of this,” said Sen, Mark Spreitzer (D-Beloit), the only Democrat to sign on as a cosponsor for the legislation, in an interview in February. He added that a relative has over the years given coins to grandchildren on special occasions.
“People buy precious metals, whether it’s bullion or coins, not as a good the way we normally think of goods, that we charge a sales tax for,” Spreitzer said. “They buy them as investments, and generally we don’t charge sales tax on investments.”
The bill includes as “precious metal bullion” coins, bars, rounds or sheet metal containing at least 35% gold, silver, copper, platinum or palladium.
The bill’s supporters argue that Wisconsin stands alone among many states — including several in the Midwest — in continuing to apply a sales tax to coins and bullion. And in a report issued Feb. 19, the Joint Committee on Tax Exemptions endorsed the bill 8-1 as “good public policy.”
In addition to four Republicans and two Democrats, the committee’s members include revenue Secretary Peter Barca and representatives appointed by Attorney General Josh Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers, both Democrats, all of whom joined the endorsement — a likely signal that the governor will sign the legislation if it reaches his desk.
The sole dissenting vote on that committee came from Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green). On Monday, however, Marklein, the finance committee co-chair, voted in favor of the bill. Marklein has not responded to an inquiry about his contrasting votes on the legislation.
The only dissenters in Monday’s Joint Finance Committee 11-2 tally recommending the legislation to the Senate were Democrats Rep. Deb Andraca of Whitefish Bay and Sen. Kelda Roys of Madison. (One Democrat on the committee missed the vote and two Republicans were absent.)
Andraca voted against the bill “not because I’m against the principle of the bill, but because I’m against our priorities,” she said, citing diapers and feminine hygiene products among the items for which Wisconsin charges sales tax. “I just think if we’re going to hand out tax exemptions, I pick tampons and diapers over gold bullion.”
Committee co-chair Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) retorted that if Evers and the Democrats “were concerned about helping families,” the governor could have signed three recent Republican tax cut bills that he vetoed earlier this month.
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