Five members of the Georgia “state legislature” have introduced a joint bill that would exempt crypto miners from certain taxes.
Georgia MPs Don Parsons, Todd Jones, Katie Dempsey, Heath Clark, and Kasey Carpenter have the as yet untitled draft HB 1342 entered, which aims to change the tax law at state level. These changes would exempt “the use and resale of electricity for commercial crypto mining” from the previous tax burden in the future. However, this definition will probably only apply to large mining companies that occupy at least 7,000 square meters (m²) of operating space.
The bill is the latest example of American state politicians looking for ways to lure the crypto industry more into their own state. In January, for example, several Illinois lawmakers had a similar proposal submitted, which provides tax breaks for data centers that engage in crypto mining. A similar law was passed in Kentucky in March 2021 discussion posed.
Electricity costs are arguably the most important variable for many crypto companies when choosing their locations. Canadian mining company Bitfarms provided an example of this in November when it announced wanted to set up a data center in the US state of Washington, primarily because of “cost-effective electricity”. Meanwhile, the large state of Texas has particularly benefited from the exodus of the Chinese mining industry benefitswhich is probably mainly due to the fact that the state’s power grid is considered particularly unregulated and the region has a lot of renewable energy.
A total of 56,000 Bitmain miners are said to be operational in Georgia by October. The state government already has corresponding plans with the mining companies ISW Holdings and Bit5iv completed. In addition, in March 2021, a new education law adoptedwhich aims to increase financial content in high schools, including cryptocurrency expertise.
