Crypto miners compensated millions of dollars in energy fees last year succeeding the rule of mining activities.
The government of Kazakhstan took 3.07 billion tenges (Roughly $7 million) in tax payments from crypto mining entities in 2022 following the implementation of an amended law controlling the fiscal burden of mining cryptocurrencies, according to local media reports.
Primary data from the government for 2023 displays that mining fees calmed by April 27 totaling 240 million tenges, over $541,000 at the time of writing. The numbers are much lesser than the 652 million tenges (~$1.5 million) in fees paid in the initial quarter of 2022.
Kazakhstan ranks among the world’s topmost Bitcoin mining hubs. As of January 2022, the Central Asian country contributed 13.22% of the entire Bitcoin hash rate, precisely behind the United States (37.84%) and China (21.11%), according to data from Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance.
Related: Can Canada stay a crypto mining hub after Manitoba’s moratorium?
The country presented taxes on digital mining on January 1, 2022, based on electricity consumption by mining entities. The law neared into effect amid promoting national frustration with crypto miners’ undertaxed use of the national power grid, reported. The amended legislation was similarly considered a legal path for more adoption amid tightening rules worldwide.
A wave of foreign mining operators relocated to Kazakhstan during the 2021 bull market, impacting earlier tricky relations between the country and miners. Some estimates indicate that further than 87,849 rigs had been brought to the territory by November 2021 succeeding China’s crackdown on mining activities.
Newly, the government published plans to present new crypto regulations to curb tax fraud and unlawful business operations. One of the offers calls for government approval for secured digital assets issuers, while another would need miners to sell at least 75% of the crypto earned via enrolled exchanges. The move is expected to degrade tax evasion.
(ANA PAULA PEREIRA, Cointelegraph, 2023)