Background
Kentucky enacted legislation exempting qualifying currency and bullion purchases from sales and use taxes beginning August 1, 2024. After the Department of Revenue continued collecting those taxes, the General Assembly enacted KRS 139.4802 in 2025, permitting an action for refunds of tax paid on exempt currency or bullion. The Department then published instructions for seeking refunds through the existing administrative process under KRS 139.770.
Jill Stahl Huston, Karen Strayer, and Stacy Earl paid sales tax when purchasing silver bullion from Coins+ LLC. Money Metals Exchange, an online bullion retailer, had collected and remitted more than $55,000 in Kentucky taxes from more than 800 customers. Neither the individual purchasers nor Money Metals sought a refund through the Department before suing. The Boone Circuit Court dismissed the action, and the plaintiffs appealed.
The Court’s Holding
The Court of Appeals affirmed. It held that Money Metals, as a retailer that collected and remitted the taxes, was required to exhaust the available administrative refund process before seeking judicial relief. Because Money Metals neither used that process nor alleged that it was inadequate or futile, its failure to exhaust deprived the circuit court of subject-matter jurisdiction.
The court separately held that the individual purchasers could not obtain refunds directly from the Department under KRS 139.770. Under the statutory scheme, Coins+, the retailer that collected and remitted their taxes, was the proper party to request a refund and was then obligated to return the refunded amounts to its customers. KRS 139.4802 did not give the purchasers an independent judicial cause of action that displaced that process; even if it placed them on the same footing as retailers, they still would have been required to exhaust administrative remedies before suing.
Key Takeaways
- A retailer seeking reimbursement of Kentucky sales or use taxes must exhaust the Department of Revenue’s administrative refund procedure before filing suit unless a recognized exception applies.
- An individual purchaser who paid tax to a retailer must seek repayment from that retailer; the retailer applies to the Department for the refund and returns the money to the purchaser.
- KRS 139.4802 did not authorize purchasers or retailers to bypass the existing administrative refund framework for taxes collected on exempt currency or bullion.
Why It Matters
The decision channels Kentucky bullion-tax refund claims through retailers and the Department of Revenue rather than permitting purchasers to sue the Commonwealth directly. It also reinforces that statutory language authorizing an action for a refund does not necessarily eliminate administrative-exhaustion requirements found in the broader tax code.
For dealers and purchasers, the ruling makes the procedural route decisive: retailers must first pursue administrative refunds, while purchasers must request repayment from the retailer that collected the tax.