Kentucky Governor Vetoes Gold Bill, Legislature Expected to Override
FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY / ACCESS Newswire / March 26, 2025 / Slapping smalltime savers in the face for the second time in 12 months, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has again vetoed a bill that would end sales taxes on purchases of precious metals.
House Bill 2, introduced by Rep. TJ Roberts, enjoyed overwhelming support in both chambers of the state legislature. Gov. Beshear's veto sets up a showdown a year in the making between the legislature and the state's top official.
Last year, Gov. Beshear purported to exercise a line-item veto of a gold and silver sales tax exemption that had been included in a 2024 revenue bill. At the time, he sneered at Kentucky smalltime savers and investors, saying, 'if you own gold, you can afford to pay sales tax.'
At the time, the legislature deemed Beshear's line veto invalid and directed that the provision be formally codified by the Revisor of Statutes (which did so).
State Attorney General Russell Coleman declared the governor's veto invalid in a detailed analysis that explained the line-item veto power only exists in the Kentucky constitution with respect to appropriations bills, which the bill at hand was not.
Ignoring the state constitution and findings by the state's top lawyer, though, the governor nevertheless directed the Kentucky Department of Revenue to continue collecting sales taxes on gold and silver purchases, threatening Kentucky businesses, savers, and investors with legal action if they did not pay.
That's why Roberts, a freshman legislator, introduced his House Bill 2 in January 2025, and the bill passed the state house by an overwhelming 76-17 and the state senate by another overwhelming vote of 30-6.
HB 2 also provides a mechanism for victimized Kentucky citizens to reclaim their unconstitutionally seized sales taxes on any gold or silver purchases since last summer.
The bill reads, 'any aggrieved taxpayer who has had taxes collected from them in any purchase that are exempt under KRS 139.480(37), may maintain an action for a refund on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, without need to resort to any administrative process, against any person collecting or holding such tax funds, including the Secretary of the Finance and Administration Cabinet and the Commissioner of the Department of Revenue.'
In an interview with the Sound Money Defense League, lead sponsor Rep. Roberts noted, 'Gov. Beshear's veto is disappointing but in-line with his tyrant tendencies. This governor is fighting tooth and nail to keep violating the U.S. Constitution as it regards gold and silver,'
The liberty-minded policymaker continued, 'Last year, we repealed the gold and silver sales tax, but Andy Beshear persistently stood in the way of the will of the people. This year, I will make sure the legislature fulfills the will of the people of Kentucky.'
If the legislature overrides the governor's veto as expected and HB 2 becomes law, taxpayers will be entitled to reimbursement of their attorney's fees and legal costs as well whilst seeking recovery of back taxes.
The state's GOP supermajority is expected to reconvene March 27th and 28th to override any of Gov. Beshear's vetoes.
208-258-2528
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Now is the time for all Americans to come to the aid of their country
(Photo: Brandon Kingdollar/NC Newsline) So, I was at a protest last month in Cleveland, where I was visiting my dying mother. I told her I needed to leave her to go downtown for the protest on that damp, windy spring day. She understood. The turnout was okay. My reporter's eye would have put the crowd at around a thousand. I usually attend protests in Raleigh, and the one a couple weeks previously hit around five thousand, though I'm told the protest I missed while I was in Cleveland was somewhat smaller. A little more recently I went to another protest, and that hit a nice crowd of maybe 500 or more in downtown Durham on a Thursday afternoon. Then I was going to join the one in Raleigh on the same day but a friend said don't bother, it's ending and had only a few hundred people. So, I have a single question, a question for the folks of Cleveland and Raleigh and North Carolina and everywhere else: Where the hell are you people? What are you waiting for? Illegal deportations? Check. Anonymous secret police grabbing people up and disappearing them regardless of rights or status? Done. Wholesale refusal to respect the Constitution, whether that means abiding by judicial rulings and the emoluments clause or simply respecting citizens' first, fourth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendment rights? Already there. Nothing is lacking; all the signs and actions are there. The current regimes — both in North Carolina and Washington DC — do not respect the courts, the ballot box, the people, or the rule of law. And here came nationwide protests and you — you personally! You! — where the hell were you? What, did you have errands to run? Yoga? The lawn looked like a mess? You had the sniffles? 'I was GOING to stand up to fascism,' we will say in the future, 'but I had an orthodontist appointment.' We laughed scornfully about Trump's refusal to honor World War I dead in France because of rain. Well, where the hell are we and what's keeping us away? You guys: we don't have time for this bull. I mean we don't have time for all the protests, sure; that's part of the plan. If we're exhausted and poor and worn out, we're less likely to protest. But just like you never have time for a doctor's appointment until what the doctor could have quickly solved puts you in the hospital or the grave? We either protest now like our lives depend on it — spoiler alert — or we let them do as they please with our lives. Those are the only options. Nobody is coming to help us; those who can, like corporations (with the usual few noble exceptions: Penzeys, Ben & Jerry's, Costco) or political leadership, won't. Those who wish they could (the entire rest of what we once called the free world) can't. It's us or nobody. And just the way more than a third of our population looked at a choice between trying to solve our problems on the one hand and electing a vast new and terrifying parcel of much worse problems on the other, said 'So sorry, busy, can't be bothered,' you — You! You personally! — are going about your business. Dude. Your business is saving your life. You may love the game you're playing on your phone, and you should play it and enjoy it — but if you fall into the sea while you're playing it, don't keep playing: swim for your life. You may need to work out for your health, but if someone tries to kidnap you while you're jogging by, you don't get to say, 'I'd love to fight back, but, you know: leg day.' You have to inconvenience yourself. A meme went around during the first Trump administration that said, 'I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people.' It was a wonderful symbol of the great divide among us. Now we're in the same place, only I'm talking to my fellow non-Fascist Americans. I don't know how to tell you that when someone is trying to enslave you, you fight: you fight and you do not stop fighting, because it's now or never. I'm told that if we get 3.5 percent of the people in the streets, we're going to win. What are we telling them if we don't? My wife tells me she has been taught that if someone has her in their control and plans to rape her, the calculations are complex. If I choose to go along, will that let me live through it? Should I run? Can I keep him talking? Will fighting make things worse? It's unimaginable but correct: whatever keeps you alive, do that, and live to work through the horrible consequences. But if in that situation your captor tries to pull you into a vehicle? Fight for your life: you won't come back out. Once he gets you in that car? You're as good as dead. Fight. You guys, they've got us, and they're trying to pull us into the car. I personally am fighting for our lives. What do you plan to do? June 14th there's another nationwide protest, scheduled for the same day as the idiot birthday parade. You guys, it's now or never. Fight or die.
Chicago Tribune
4 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Today in History: George Orwell's ‘1984' first published
Today is Sunday, June 8, the 159th day of 2025. There are 206 days left in the year. Today in history: On June 8, 1949, George Orwell's novel '1984' was first published. Also on this date: In 1789, in an address to the U.S. House of Representatives, James Madison proposed amending the Constitution to include a Bill of Rights. In 1966, a merger was announced between the National and American Football Leagues, to take effect in 1970. In 1967, during the Six-Day War, 34 American crew members were killed when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a Navy intelligence-gathering ship in the Mediterranean Sea. (Israel later said the Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian vessel.) In 1968, U.S. authorities announced the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of civil rights leader the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1978, a jury in Clark County, Nevada, ruled the so-called 'Mormon Will,' purportedly written by the late billionaire Howard Hughes, was a forgery. In 1995, U.S. Marines rescued Capt. Scott O'Grady, whose F-16C fighter jet had been shot down by Bosnian Serbs on June 2. In 2009, North Korea's highest court sentenced American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee to 12 years' hard labor for trespassing and 'hostile acts.' (The women were pardoned in early August 2009 after a trip to Pyongyang by former President Bill Clinton.) In 2017, former FBI Director James Comey, testifying before Congress, asserted that President Donald Trump fired him to interfere with Comey's investigation of Russia's ties to the Trump campaign. In 2021, Ratko Mladić, the military chief known as the 'Butcher of Bosnia' for orchestrating genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Balkan nation's 1992-95 war, lost his final legal battle when U.N. judges rejected his appeal and affirmed his life sentence. In 2023, Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in Miami on 37 felony counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents that had been moved to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida home. (The case against Trump was abandoned following Trump's November 2024 presidential election victory.) Today's Birthdays: Singer Nancy Sinatra is 85. Musician Boz Scaggs is 81. Pianist Emanuel Ax is 76. Actor Sonia Braga is 75. Actor Kathy Baker is 75. Singer Bonnie Tyler is 73. Computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee is 70. Actor Griffin Dunne is 70. 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams is 68. Actor-director Keenen Ivory Wayans is 67. Singer Mick Hucknall (Simply Red) is 65. Musician Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran) is 63. Actor Julianna Margulies is 59. Former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democrat from Arizona, is 55. Tennis Hall of Famer Lindsay Davenport is 49. TV personality-host Maria Menounos is 47. Country singer-songwriter Sturgill Simpson is 47. Guitarist-songwriter Derek Trucks is 46. Tennis Hall of Famer Kim Clijsters is 42. U.S. Olympic track gold medalist Athing Mu-Nikolayev is 23.
Boston Globe
4 hours ago
- Boston Globe
Today in History: June 8, Trump indicted on classified document charges
In 1789, in an address to the US House of Representatives, James Madison proposed amending the Constitution to include a Bill of Rights. In 1949, George Orwell's novel '1984' was first published. In 1966, a merger was announced between the National and American Football Leagues, to take effect in 1970. In 1967, during the Six-Day War, 34 American crew members were killed when Israel attacked the USS Liberty, a Navy intelligence-gathering ship in the Mediterranean Sea. (Israel later said the Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian vessel.) In 1968, US authorities announced the capture in London of James Earl Ray, the suspected assassin of civil rights leader the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In 1978, a jury in Clark County, Nev., ruled the so-called 'Mormon Will,' purportedly written by the late billionaire Howard Hughes, was a forgery. Advertisement In 1995, US Marines rescued Captain Scott O'Grady, whose F-16C fighter jet had been shot down by Bosnian Serbs on June 2. In 2009, North Korea's highest court sentenced American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee to 12 years' hard labor for trespassing and 'hostile acts.' (The women were pardoned in early August 2009 after a trip to Pyongyang by former President Bill Clinton.) In 2017, former FBI Director James Comey, testifying before Congress, asserted that President Trump fired him to interfere with Comey's investigation of Russia's ties to the Trump campaign. In 2021, Ratko Mladić, the military chief known as the 'Butcher of Bosnia' for orchestrating genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the Balkan nation's 1992-95 war, lost his final legal battle when UN judges rejected his appeal and affirmed his life sentence. In 2023, PresidentTrump was indicted by a grand jury in Miami on 37 felony counts related to the alleged mishandling of classified documents that had been moved to Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida home. (The case against Trump was abandoned following Trump's November 2024 presidential election victory.)
