http://www.anonews.co/man-still-has-to-pay-tax-for-energy-he-generates-himself/
This man pays electricity taxes on every watt of energy his house consumes, even though he is self sufficient & produces more energy than he consumes from the power grid.
Should he pay taxes for a service rendered by the state which he does not utilize?
Crypto taxes are a hot topic in this section. This news story could in the future apply to crypto mining. Imagine if someone bought enough solar panels to power their bitcoin mining operation. And the state charged them for every kilowatt hour of energy their bitcoin miners consume, even though their operation is fully powered independently outside of state generated or regulated electrical grids.
This news story reminds me of this case where uganda tried to tax its citizens for using social media websites like twitter and facebook:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/uganda-bans-vpns-to-prevent-users-from-dodging-its-absurd-new-social-media-tax-4614685
What are peoples thoughts on this?
You're right. It's similar to the Ugandan tax on social media in that the government is taxing something that is not even generated by them, or even regulated or controlled by them.
This man is generating all of his energy and being self sustained. Not only that, he is generating energy in a responsible and renewable manner. Yet, the government is taxing him on something that is not even maintained or owned by the state/public. It's essentially a tax for using a thing that is generated completely responsibly... What?
The concern with crypto mining is definitely there. I think that it's unlikely the government would change their attitude towards crypto mining power generation and the taxes involved with self-sustained electricity generation. It's absurd, but it'll probably stick since cryptos are only going to continue to grow and would be a big revenue source for the government. Obviously though, the mining operations would probably just move overseas, at an increasing pace, if these taxes continue to be put in place to disincentivise people from generating their own power to mine/use in general.