Minerals Mined on Federal Land Spared Taxes, Aided by Senator Reid

While Democrats rip into oil and gas companies for failing to pay their "fair share" because of tax breaks Congress gave them, another special interest break they're not talking about is the billions of dollars worth of gold, silver, uranium and other minerals that mining companies take off federal lands for which they pay nothing.

"They don't pay a dime, not a penny for the gold and uranium they remove from public lands," says Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense.

In 1993, the House passed a bill imposing an 8 percent royalty, but Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., helped kill an agreement in the Senate. In 2007, West Virginia Rep. Nick Rahall helped pass a bill in the House that imposed a 4 percent royalty on gross revenue on existing operations and 8 percent on new operations. Again Reid stepped in, saying the House bill "won't stand over here."

This is totally unsustainable. Why should these companies get access to our public natural resources, which are nonrenewable, for nothing other than their concession and operating costs? Politics as usual. Protecting the land trust. BS. Kickbacks is more like it.

Mining companies should be made to pay for these resources; if mining at that particular site then becomes unfeasible due to reasonable resource costs, then so be it. If that is the case, then that particular mineral is no longer a reserve or a resource until such time as it becomes either economically viable or technology makes it possible to mine it at a profit.

Subsidizing these operations only deprive us of our limited resources at a price that does not represent the full-cost of its extraction and future scarcity. Those that benefit are a limited group of employees and shareholders; the rest of us loose.

These kinds of agreements and business practices that are created by political favoritism are at the core of corruption in government.

—for nearly forty years now, hardrock mining has generally had to reclaim the previous hundred so or years of mining and otherwise abide by the most restrictive environmental standards in the world, as well as jump through years of legal hoops put in place for the sole purpose of making it impossible to mine anything at a profit.
—miners generally pay the same property taxes (and any other business taxes) as anyone else—

—the present yap about mining taxes mostly reflects the fact that gold and copper can still be mined at a profit and the politicians would like to confiscate it—

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