Illinois Lawmakers Propose Tax Incentives For BTC Miners: Report

The Illinois Lawmakers propose tax incentives for Bitcoin miners and Georgia lawmakers are following the way so let’s find out more today in our latest Bitcoin latest news today.

The Illinois lawmakers are hoping to give tax breaks to mining companies and the US State of Georgia is also looking to introduce tax incentives for crypto mining according to the legislation filed this year. According to the bill introduced recently, the House representatives in Georgia are proposing tax exemptions for the sale or use of electricity in mining activities. Illinois Senate bill introduced in late January is looking to extend the tax incentive for data centers to crypto mining and the mining is a computing process through which popular cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH are minted. The energy-intensive process has come under fire by regulators around the world but the United States embraced it and it became the market leader in the crypto mining sector.

Illinois and Georgia are just the latest to consider the tax incentives for miners as both Kentucky and Texas offer tax breaks to attract new miners to their states. In the meantime, Senators Ron Wyden, Pat Toomey, and Cynthia Lummis are all looking to make sure a crypto tax reporting provision in the US infrastructure bill doesn’t apply to miners. After China, the world leader in BTC miner outlawed all mining activities in the country in 2021, the US picked up on teh demand and as per the data from Cambridge University Centre for Alternative VFinace, in three months of China’s ban, the US became the hottest BTC mining spot in the world with 35% of the BTC hashrate or the computing power used per second in the process.

Like Kentucky House Bill 230 the Georgia House bill 1342 both look to entice BTC miners by offering tax breaks for energy use. The four Republican lawmakers in Georgia that introduced the bill are looking to amend the state’s official tax code and include exemptions from sales and use taxes so as to exempt the sale or use of electricity that is used in commercial mining.

The bipartisan Illinois Senate bill also aims to amend the Civil Administrative code to include mining centers as qualifying the data center in the state over a 60-month period if the bill is passed and then signed into law by the governor. In order to qualify for the Illinois Tax incentive, the existing and new enterprises are looking to make use of the incentive but with no less than $250 million in the state and create about 20-full time jobs. In two years of qualifying, the enterprises have to certify that they are carbon neutral as per the proposed bill. In the meantime, some federal lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren, are scrutinizing crypto mining companies on their climate impact and back in 2019, the global BTC mining industry used more energy than Poland.