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New Mining Law

The New Mining Law was introduced in the year 2009, by the United States Senate Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico). This is known as the Hard rock Mining and Reclamation act.

According to this law, a royalty of 2% to 5% of the value of the locatable mineral production will be levied on the new mines on any federal land.

An additional tax on reclamation will also be levied on all hard rock mining operations on all kinds of land, be it federal, state, private or even tribal.

This reclamation tax holds good for all previously existing and all new mines which may come up in future. The exact percentage of tax amount would be decided by the secretary of the interior, but will be in between 0.3 to 1 % of the value of the locatable mineral production.

The New Hard Rock Mining and Reclamation Act is yet waiting to be passed and expected to do so before the end of the year 2009.

All the proceeds or revenue generated by the taxations and the royalties is proposed to be utilized by the government in reclaiming old and abandoned hard rock mines.

Preceding to this, the United States Government had passed a Hard rock Mining and Reclamation Act in 2007, but it never got beyond the passing stage. Due to disapproval by the Senate, the bill got shelved. If passed, it would have conferred the United States with a tag of a nation with the highest mining tax in the world.

This Hard Rock Mining and Reclamation Act had a plan to impose 8% royalty on any new mining operations and 4% flat royalty rate on all the previously operating mining operations. It also proposed to end all patents for all new mining claims.

The majority of the proceeds from both the kind of royalties, almost 70 %, were planned to fund the cleaning up and maintaining of order of shut down and abandoned mines. The remaining 30 % was planned to be utilized for the betterment and upliftment of the families affected by the mining operations, or by the shutting down of mines and loss of employment.

It was in the nineteenth century that the first ever law, the General Mining Act of 1872 was passed and was a United States Federal Law. This Law saw many subsequent amendments in 1878, 1920, 1947, 1954, 1955 and also in 1976.

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