Rules of Gold in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania has not enacted a statute recognizing gold or silver coins or bullion as legal tender for payment of debts. Historical attempts: HB 1690 (2011-2012 session, "Sound Money Act") would have (a) reaffirmed the sales tax exemption on precious metals purchases, (b) established a tax credit for capital gains incurred from the exchange of gold/silver into Federal Reserve notes, and (c) recognized gold and silver coins as legal tender. The bill did not advance. HB 2252 (2019-2020 session, Rep. Russ Diamond) moved in the opposite direction — would have applied state sales tax to precious-metals purchases — and died in committee. Pennsylvania remains absent from the legal-tender state list as of 2026 with no active sound-money bill identified in the 2025-2026 session.

Pennsylvania taxes all capital gains as ordinary personal income at a flat rate of 3.07% under the Pennsylvania Personal Income Tax. PA does not distinguish between short-term and long-term gains, does not provide preferential capital-gains rates, and does not provide a precious-metals carve-out. While many Pennsylvania municipalities impose local Earned Income Taxes on wages, capital gains and other investment income are generally NOT subject to local taxation — only the state's flat 3.07% rate applies to PM gains. Pennsylvania's 3.07% rate is among the lowest state capital-gains rates in the dataset for jurisdictions that DO tax cap gains; only states with no individual income tax (TX/FL/TN/NV/SD/WA-on-most-income/WY/AK/NH-post-2025) have lower effective rates. HB 1690 (2011, failed) would have created a tax credit equivalent to the 3.07% rate on qualifying PM-to-FRN exchanges; no such credit currently exists.

Pennsylvania has not enacted enabling legislation authorizing a state-administered or state-chartered bullion depository. No depository-authorization bill identified in 2021-2025 sessions. The Pennsylvania State Treasurer has no statutory authority to operate a depository or hold physical bullion as a state asset. (Pennsylvania Treasury occasionally auctions gold bullion and other precious-metals items recovered through the unclaimed-property program — these are pass-through holdings of property awaiting return to rightful owners, not state-treasury reserves.)

The Pennsylvania State Treasurer (Stacy Garrity, R, in office since January 2021; serving second term and announced 2026 GOP gubernatorial run) does not hold physical gold or silver as a reserve asset on the state balance sheet. Pennsylvania statutes do not authorize state-treasury PM holdings. Treasurer Garrity's published priorities focus on transparency, fee reduction, unclaimed-property return ($5B+), and PA529 college-savings program — no precious-metals reserve initiative announced or pending. Unclaimed-property auctions periodically include gold bullion and silver coins recovered from abandoned safe-deposit boxes, but these are escheated assets awaiting owner reunification rather than state reserves.

Pennsylvania's two major public-pension systems — the Public School Employees' Retirement System (PSERS, ~$76B AUM) and the State Employees' Retirement System (SERS, ~$40B AUM) — both maintain commodities allocations within their broader alternatives sleeves. PSERS reduced its commodities allocation from 5% to 4% in October 2024, with the reduction reallocated toward Brookfield infrastructure exposure; SERS's published asset-allocation summary references commodities at the program level without enumerating discrete physical-precious-metals exposure. Standard institutional commodity allocations typically use futures contracts, swaps, and broad commodity-index ETFs rather than physical bullion holdings. Neither PSERS nor SERS publishes a discrete "physical gold" or "physical silver" line item in summary disclosures. Field marked `No-public-disclosure` rather than definitive `No` because the alternatives/commodities sleeve composition is not fully enumerated in publicly-available summary documents — physical PM exposure is presumed minimal-to-zero but cannot be ruled out without ACFR-level review.