Kazakhstan will increase tax rates for Bitcoin Mining from 2023

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has approved new tax rates for crypto miners – and tax authorities have been instructed to charge miners up to $ 0.052 per kilowatt hour (kWh) from January 1, 2023.

At the moment, miners have to pay a fixed rate of just over USD 0.002 per kWh consumed. But after a winter devastated by crypto-mining shortages, the government decided to force bitcoin (BTC) and crypto-miners to pay more.

The government began to deplore the fact that miners paid “insignificant” taxes on their income back in February and tried last month to make changes to the tax law.

The country’s Ministry of Finance claimed that in the first quarter of the current financial year, miners paid more than USD 15 million in taxes.

The new tax measure, which was signed into law by Tokayev on Monday, will work on a sliding scale. As such, users who pay a higher price for electricity, instead of paying a fixed rate per unit of energy consumed, will pay a maximum of $ 0.052 per kWH in tax, while consumers who pay less for electricity will pay as little as $ 0.002 per kWh. kWh consumed.

As energy prices tend to vary throughout the year, this will mean that when power prices rise in the country, so will the miners’ tax bills.

Most miners operate in the country’s capital Nur-Sultan, formerly known as Astana.

But there is good news for miners who go off the grid: Miners who use their own power sources will be taxed at a rate of around $ 0.02 per kWh.

In the meantime, those who can use renewable energy sources in their mining operations will be obliged to pay tax rates of only 0.002 per kWh.

The government has indicated that it is prepared to crack down on illegal and unregistered miners. Earlier this year, it introduced a legal requirement forcing all miners to register with a central body and provide detailed reports on their operations.

____

Learn more:
New taxes await Kazakhstan’s besieged bitcoin and crypto miners
– Another headache for Bitcoin miners in Central Asia as three countries hit by blackout

– Kazakhstan teaches Bitcoin miners a lesson as chaos affects BTC Hashrate
The President of Kazakhstan says that the government must set “favorable” conditions for the development of the crypto industry

– Kazakhstan develops new program to merge crypto exchanges with banks
– Kazakhstan’s central bank examines “opportunities in crypto, DeFi” innovation