I have a one troy ounce Canadian gold coin I bought nearly a decade ago. I bought it because it was pretty, not as an investment. Should I wish to sell it by going to a local jeweler/gold dealer, what percentage of the spot market price could I sell it for?
we pay the spot price for ml. Locally,you may get slightlyless./ Don’t take much less.
I’m pretty sure I’ll have to pay sales tax (8.5%?).
I actually just asked samclem this very question in person at Gfactor’s dopefest tonight (at about 11:00) and he told me that he would pay about $50 under spot price today for a one ounce 50 peso gold piece and then sell it directly to a refiner for scrap. I questioned why he wouldn’t hold onto it a bit and see if the price went up and he said that it would entail too much risk and that he was in business of making money. I actually sold some gold last December and do not recall having to pay any sales here in Michigan IIRC.
Didn’t see you there; where were you hiding? 
Good time had by all. 
Why would you pay sales tax when you sell something? Generally taxes are only collected when you buy something.
Not sure if it’s the same for all states, but in Texas there is no sales tax for gold if the transaction is over $1,000. The reasoning is that gold transactions above this threshold is not buying goods as much as converting one type of money into another. Note that it’s for the transaction, so if you buy one 1/2 ounce bullion you pay sales tax. But if you buy two, no tax.
Maybe the law is different here, but I had to pay sales tax when I sold some silver in California many years ago. IIRC trading metals (gold for silver, for example) was not subject to sales tax. If you sold a certain number of ounces or a certain value of metal it wasn’t taxed. (Over a certain amount, and it’s considered a non-retail transaction?) But selling under a certain amount for cash was taxed.
As far as paying taxes when you buy something, I think it depends on how you look at it. It’s the seller who has to pay sales tax. Uncommonly, a retailer might include sales tax in the price of his wares. Sometimes they’ll have a ‘No Sales Tax Sale!!!’ where the consumer doesn’t pay sales tax. But usually we pay the tax to the seller, who then pays it to the state. (I bought my GMT II from an authorised dealer, and Rolex didn’t like dealers discounting their watches. So I told the dealer to pay the sales tax himself, or I’d buy my watch in Oregon. He still had to pay sales tax on the sale, but he was not reimbursed by me.)
There is probably no sales tax. This really depends upon the jurisdiction, and if there is a sales tax, it is usually paid by the buyer and collected by the seller.
But, you do have to pay taxes on the capital gains (i.e. the difference between what you bought the coin for and what you sell it for).
I’d shop around and see where you can get the best price for it. Most of these places are in for the value of the gold itself, and will pay a bit less than spot because they too want to make somewhat of a profit too. However, it shouldn’t be substantially less than spot.
There may actually be some value in the coin itself and it might actually be worth more than the mere gold it contains. I have my doubts since these coins were created solely for their gold content and were sold in unlimited runs. But, you never know. Ask a coin dealer if the coin is worth anything besides its gold content.
[quote=“qazwart, post:8, topic:551845”]
I asked samclem that as well and he told me that unless the coin was rare (and i doubt that a Canadian Maple Leaf is rare) they don’t have any collector value since the price of gold is so high now that it kind of over rides any collector interest. Same goes for jewelery, it’s mostly just worth the weight unless it is a unique artsy piece or has large diamonds (over 1-1/2 carets).
You will get your highest offer directly from a gold processor. A jewelry manufacturer for instance, will pay you what they pay for gold. Everyone else will want to take a cut from the transaction.
The post by Gfactor was actually me at his house last night, trying to type on a netbook with one hand. Fail.
Call the coin dealers in your local phone book. One should be willing to pay about the spot price of gold, perhaps $5-20 less. You won’t do better than that.
And, I totally don’t understand why you would have to pay sales tax. You’re not a retail business.
–The real samclem
That’s the way it was in California. I don’t know if it’s the same in Washington. I do know that sales tax has to be paid when you sell a car. Normally the buyer pays it when he registers. ISTM that a gold dealer or jeweler is doing the same thing as the person buying the car, only he doesn’t want it to come out of his pocket.
If I decide I want to sell it, I’ll have to find the bloody thing first. I may keep it because I think it would be neat to have a Maple Leaf, and then get a Krugerrand and an American Eagle to go with it. OTOH, I don’t even need one coin; let alone three.
Thanks for the answers.
Johnny–I still don’t understand this, and I think you’re incorrect. You, a private person, has some silver they’ve somehow acquired. You decide to sell it. You go to a coin dealer(or whatever), he says he’s paying xxx for it, and he writes you a check for that amount. You don’t owe any sales tax. The dealer who buys the silver, if and when he sells it to a retail customer, collects the sales tax from the new buyer. If you can find a link to the law that supports you, I’d love to see it.
As to the “sales tax has to be paid when you sell a car”–You buy a new car for $20,000. You drive it for xxx years. You decide to sell it. You sell it privately for xx. You don’t have to pay the sales tax–the buyer has to pay it when he registers the title. Or am I missing something?
As I said, this was in California. Rules are probably different elsewhere.
It depends on how you look at it. When a private party sells a car to another private party, the state levies a tax on the transaction. It doesn’t matter that you paid sales tax when you bought the car. The state taxes it again. They don’t care who pays the tax, as long as it’s paid. If I, the seller, pays the sales tax and provide proof to the buyer that it has been paid, then he will not have to pay sales tax. But the way it’s set up is to make the transaction easy and less prone to cheating. So in almost all cases the buyer pays the sales tax at the time of registration. A buyer may insist that I pay the sales tax by reducing the purchase price of the car, then he pays it out of his pocket to the DMV/DOL. But the tax gets paid.
Or take that Rolex. Ordinarily I would have paid for the watch and also paid sales tax on it. I didn’t want to. So the dealer sold me the watch. But he still had to pay tax on the sale. The difference is that he paid the tax out of the store’s pocket, rather than paying it with money I gave him.
When I sold my silver, the state wanted tax on the sale. To make it easy, and to avoid cheating, the dealer collected the tax and paid it to the state. Unless there’s a law against it, I could have paid the tax and brought him proof that I paid it. Or he could have paid it out of his own pocket.
Here’s a thread from last week asking about sales taxes on garage sales. It notes that most states don’t tax ‘occasional’ sales. But it also notes that states have different laws. California in the late-'80s/early-'90s might have had different laws that Washington or Ohio does today. Based on my transaction there, at that time, California had a rule that defined sales of precious metals below a certain threshold (and all vehicles) differently from ‘occasional’ sales of other items. That I had to pay the tax instead of the dealer is probably a function of the state having to be paid by one of us, and the dealer having the option not to buy. Had I sold to an individual, no one would have known; but the dealer has to account to the state for his cashflow.
I think you got screwed. YOU did NOT have to pay the sales tax on your sale of the silver. If the dealer charged you that, then he fucked you. Your sale of the silver to a retail dealer had no sales tax consequences. If he turned around and resold it, then there was a sale at retail which required the sales tax to be paid.
Your reference to the law about the amount of a sale of precious metal under/over $1000. had nothing to do with you owing a sales tax. You didn’t. That was only if you purchased bullion as a buyer and whether you owed sale tax at that point.
Since I have one handy, I checked the Standard Catalog of World Coins (George Cuhaj editor) and none of the Maples is really pulling any premium.
A couple of the Pandas and Nuggets maybe.
It’s possible. But I’m not an expert on California tax laws. Anyway, metals were a lot cheaper then.
Quote:
*I think you got screwed. YOU did NOT have to pay the sales tax on your sale of the silver. If the dealer charged you that, then he fucked you. Your sale of the silver to a retail dealer had no sales tax consequences. If he turned around and resold it, then there was a sale at retail which required the sales tax to be paid. *
Your reference to the law about the amount of a sale of precious metal under/over $1000. had nothing to do with you owing a sales tax. You didn’t. That was only if you purchased bullion as a buyer and whether you owed sale tax at that point.
Hey Samclem
I thought there was some sort of rider in the heathcare bill that affected the sale of gold currency as now being taxable, where in the past, currency was considered currency or something. Could this be what is happening? I know the OP is in Canadia. Sorry for the hijack.
Oh, man. Sorry samclem, but I just about fell off my chair laughing at this.
The mental image that came to mind was… disturbing.
I thought that Johnny L.A. was from Los Angeles, not Lower Alberta.