I looked into the mineral extraction tax (MET) as well, in fact the same guy made three amendments and in one of them he suggest to change the tax from currently hard-fixed rates (
https://www.zakonyprolidi.cz/cs/2016-98) to 10% of the current market price of the commodity/ore.
https://www.psp.cz/sqw/historie.sqw?o=8&T=531It is the last suggestion from the same person (nr. 6720)
If my math and logic is correct, current fee is 10692 CZK per tonne of "lithium" and in note 2 it says for certain metals (lithium, uranium, manganese, copper, gold...) the commodity definition is understood as pure metal.
Let's say yearly production can be 25000 tonnes per annum of LCE as described in EMH presentation.
If that would have 18% of pure lithium, the total tax right now would be 25000 * 0.18 * 10692 CZK = 2.16 M USD
I'm not sure if my math is correct. It is all very confusing because apparently the tax already
WAS 10% of market price until 2016, then it was set to a fixed price and the law contains paragraph about "
mining pure lithium" (
) which doesn't really make much sense as you can't do that.
In case the law is passed and tax would be increased to 10% (
reverted back to 10%) of the current market price instead of a fixed price:
- the yearly MET in worst case scenario ("lithium" = LCE) for this would be 25000 * 9000 * 0.1 = 22.5M USD per year in case of $9000/tonne lithium. If the price increases to $15000/tonne, the tax would be 37.5M USD per year.
- the yearly MET in realistic scenario ("lithium" = amount of lithium contained in lithium hydroxide) would mean there is about 16.5% of "lithium" in lithium hydroxide and 1 LCE = approx. 0.88 lithium hydroxide. So the calculation is 25000 LCE * 0.88 (convert to hydroxide) * 0.16 (convert to pure lithium) * 9000 (market price or lithium) * 0.1 (tax) = 3.1M USD per year. If the price increases to $15000/tonne, the tax would be 5.3M USD.
Not great, not terrible. (as Mr. Dyatlov would say)
(20min delay)