In the wake of a credit outlook downgrade for New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and state legislators have just declared war on the financial center’s vibrant gold bullion market.<\/p>\n
The global credit rating agency Moody’s reduced the Big Apple’s outlook from “stable” to “negative,” issuing a statement:<\/p>\n
The change in outlook to negative reflects New York City’s updated spending projections, which result in wider multi-year budget gaps than previously anticipated. The fact that the city projects large and persistent imbalances under still-favorable economic and fiscal conditions highlights the scale of the underlying structural budget challenges.<\/em><\/p>\n Mayor Mamdani called the outlook<\/a> adjustment “premature” and cited $5 billion in additional funding through legislation under consideration in the chambers of the New York State Legislature as a “real commitment to ensuring we can close this inherited fiscal deficit…”<\/p>\n Among the revenue collection ideas proposed by Mamdani’s office is a new tax on investment-grade gold and silver<\/a> bars \u2013 as well as coins and rounds. Since 1989, all purchases of precious metals exceeding $1,000 have been exempt from state sales tax. This exemption does not apply to numismatic items whose value depends on rarity or collectability, or those used for artistic purposes.<\/p>\n The world’s former financial capital is home to Wall Street and the CME Group, which operates the precious metals futures market known as Comex. It also hosts dozens, if not hundreds, of precious metals dealers, depositories, and institutional gold clearing centers. But the good mayor intends to impose heavy taxes on the world’s greatest financial asset to stem the bleeding of his massive budget deficit.<\/p>\n Complicating the situation is the reality that the CME Group has resisted calls to expand the network of precious metals depositories involved in futures contract deliveries beyond the New York region \u2013 a long-standing practice dating back to a bygone era when New York was the center of the financial universe. In fact, two members of Congress recently introduced a federal bill regarding this matter.<\/p>\n According to documents from the New York City Mayor’s office and the New York State Legislature, officials anticipate a $300 million increase in tax revenue for New York City and $601 million statewide from the elimination of the long-standing precious metals exemption under current law.<\/p>\n Mamdani may be greedily eyeing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue from gold and silver, but these estimates fail to account for the financial devastation the entire sector would face. With this new tax, dealers would close their doors, institutions would leave New York, and the tax base would shrink rather than grow.<\/p>\n Conversely, when states remove<\/em> sales taxes on gold and silver, new jobs and revenue are created.<\/p>\n The Sound Money Defense League, the leading national public policy group on gold and silver issues at the state and federal levels, has been tracking this issue since 2014. The overwhelming trend is toward removing taxes on the only form of money mentioned in the U.S. Constitution, not imposing them.<\/p>\n New York has considered measures like this in previous years, failing to enact the new tax despite several attempts. The reasons are obvious: investors will simply switch to purchasing metals in one of the many states that do not impose this tax, or from online retailers.<\/p>\n This reality is compounded by the fact that Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island (virtually all states bordering New York) have already partially or completely eliminated sales taxes on gold and silver purchases.<\/p>\n Notably, New Jersey passed its precious metals exemption in 2024 without a single dissenting vote in either chamber of the state legislature. And Connecticut expanded its exemption in 2025.<\/p>\n Currently, 44 states in the country do not apply a state sales tax on gold and silver purchases. Of the six states that still apply this tax, five are currently considering legislation to end it.<\/p>\n The new focus on taxing gold and silver is financial desperation masquerading as financial prudence. Mayor Mamdani and other proponents of this proposal intend to use precious metals investors as a bailout for an increasingly fiscally weak government bureaucracy.<\/p>\n New York will not tax you for purchasing stocks, bonds<\/a>, real estate, ETFs, cryptocurrencies, and a myriad of other investments. However, if a New York resident purchases precious metals as a means to save their wealth against inflation, Mayor Mamdani and the legislators in Albany want their pound of flesh.<\/p>\n New York should preserve the existing tax exemption on precious metals purchases rather than throwing the New York gold<\/a> market into crisis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the wake of a credit outlook downgrade for New York City, Mayor Zohran Mamdani and state legislators have just declared war on the financial center’s vibrant gold bullion market. The global credit rating agency Moody’s reduced the Big Apple’s outlook from “stable” to “negative,” issuing a statement: The change in outlook to negative reflects New York City’s updated spending … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7081,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investorofemet.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investorofemet.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investorofemet.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investorofemet.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investorofemet.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investorofemet.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investorofemet.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investorofemet.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investorofemet.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investorofemet.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}