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This is a news story about a man who installed 35 solar panels on his home.

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://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4614685.0

What are peoples thoughts on this?

Now I am afraid to use green energy. Lolz.

What kind of government does that? A greedy one?

I dont think that it is the valid claim from the state government because using solar panels and energy generated with it should be free of taxes. In my country government is literally giving subsidies to buy the solar panels and encouraging people to use them.

After reading your story it feels sad that how they are demotivating the miner after harvesting the green energy also.

he should not be taxed and if the government is forced to pay taxes it means that people must be replaced by the government in the country and if they cannot be replaced, they may have to surrender to this situation and if forced to pay taxes should be reduced by the tax price

Well if everyone will start using that kind of energy for their homes then maybe our governments will have no use and will reduce the money of the country because of that. But still doing that is cruel enough.

Some times I really believe that the best option is to live somewhere deep in the forests of South America just to not be confronted with all this nonsense.

No internet. No money. No government. Just you, the nature, and animals, and some creepy bugs and whatnot.

Where I live we are subject to so many taxation laws, that even if you don't use anything, or don't have an actual income, you still have to pay tax. I see it happen quite frequently that people without an income and any way to pay due taxes, are being bombarded with penalties constantly adding 50-100% to the amount the tax department thinks they owe them.

Is this the way we are supposed to live? Why does someone not being able to pay a penny have its life ruined because of all the penalty amounts that are being added each quarter of not paying? It's ridiculous.

There is only one kind of government, and that is the greedy one indeed.
They mostly care more about money than the environment or their own people in some cases. Cases like this show exactly that.

The government always wants to get more money from the people and it still does not matter how to get them.

I have to admit, this was so ridiculous that I had to fact check. And...wow. I understand that HST is a consumption tax, but that shouldn't be applicable in this situation where he's not really taking anything from the state. Shouldn't its tax base be the money spent anyway? He didn't spend anything for his electricity. 0 multiplied by whatever should be zero. I wonder, does this happen anywhere else?

I did find this in the linked article though:


...so they also probably realize how stupid this is.

Since the owner is connected to the grid it is normal to pay some taxes, but since the house is self sustained i don't understand why doesn't he just disconnected himself from.the national electric grid. It is as simple as that.

All because they care more about themselves and filling their pockets, rather than allow people to earn more.

Unfortunately, this person was not informed about how the electric system works in Canada, maybe if he know how stupid rules his county have, he would not invest in solar panels. In some countries people can sell energy they produce in main grid, and make some profit from that - and I see this man can also do that :


But if he wants to keep all electricity for himself he need to pay tax. It is strange, but in this way Canada wanted to discourage people who would like to be energetically independent.


I am not sure can he do that, maybe there is some law by which it is mandatory to have an electric meter and be connected to the electrical network, but it would be nice to just disconnect from the main grid. Although even then it would not be impossible for the government to collect taxes, it would be probably based on the size of the house or solar panels.

This is outrageously ridiculous and I really pity that man, Kris Currie, who put extraordinary amount of thought and work to achieve a goal of self sufficiency. However, I disagree with the conclusion of this article that such  energy schemes  are going to become more prevalent in the future. I believe in human progress and I think that such foolish taxes will be abolished in the future just as the infamous Inheritance tax had been abolished in most countries.

It could be a tax supposed to be charged to compensate the pollution or the development of green energy. Like the companies do. No matter if you generate your own electricity I think it's fair to participate. It's not like if the man was forced to pay a VAT.

This is really unfair when we have to pay for the electricity that we don't consume but this leave him no option but to obey because thats what the law says

Thos reason why some people love to do illegal activities than the legal because they can do anythi without authorization from the governments..

So he is self-sufficient but...he produces more than he consumes from the grid.
So, unless he consumes 0 from the gird he is NOT self-sufficient.

If he is not happy with that and he says he is independent why hasn't he disconnected himself from the grid?
Simply because the devil is in the details.


This indeed would be a viable model for ever country...
When the sun is up we all produce green energy and get credits and at night we get back free energy from....
Not my problem, I put panels up!!!  /s

Interesting and quite weird thing because in my country the man who was issued than 35 solar panels he can just sell electricity to a government and not pay the electricity bills at all and you're having few examples.

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.

This is just one of the unreasonable things of the government. There are places where the government collects your land for very cheap fees then build high-rise apartments. Where you have to spend a lot of money to live there and they make a lot of money. Meanwhile, your land charge is still taxable. Unreasonable things happen everywhere.
But for crypto I feel more secure. They did not know who was holding it. There is no way to collect taxes. Only get them tax if they trade on any exchange

Govs will always want a piece of the action and profit.
If someone were to generate their own air even then the gov would want a cut

I think he no need to pay the electricity taxes because he does't consume the electricity provided by the government or the state. Good society is they who responsible to what they do,they who connect to the maid gird of course should pay the taxes to the authority.

if this is true, it is clearly a robbery on the part of the government, this is absurd, why would the man be taxed? anyway, maybe this is just an isolated incident, putting up a solar panel is very expensive, but imagine the savings on the part of the owner, it  is very economical and environmental, maybe the installation and all that is why he was taxed.

taxation on assets or business fields is mostly done in all countries and that is a necessity because for me tax income will be used to carry out development such as routine state spending, payment of state debt and other problems

That man is amazing. I really support the idea.
In the future when I mine a lot and use a lot of electricity, I will do that too. Right now I'm thinking about trying one panel first.
Hey its for our earth. We should all do it.

I Really don't know whats happening to the world because people seems to be abused by authorities and denied for our freedom on what we can and what we have.where in the world that you must be paying for your own povided electricity isn't it unfair?i hope this must be addressed nd will be given justice as this is not humanitarian actions

Naturally, it still has to collect money because of many factors. Characteristics of environmental damage, affecting human health. And the natural conditions, nature also have some influence. Tax collection is also partially appropriate for living conditions.

I have solar and have an electric bill even though I make more than I use.  They charge you for the transmission across their wires.  For me it's .008 of a cent per Killowatt. 

What his doing is beautiful, I would love to one day create my own electricity. What really annoys me is not so much the taxes, since at least it should still be less than the average person, but what really annoys me is that he has to have a meter to measure his electricity consumption. It's Canada, so I hope the US also doesn't tax people for generating their own electricity.

For every electricity bill, it's made up of two components which is the electricity bill itself, and the tax element. Depending on the tax law of the country, most times the value of the electricity taxes is dependent on the electricity bill as a huge user of megawatts is expected to pay more tax than a household user but in the case of this man whose electricity bill is Zero then the tax to be charged is zero. On the other hand, if the tax law over there would levy tax irrespective of the amount of megawatts you used, then its only the portion of tax he would be liable to pay.

The point is, for someone to be intelligent enough to generate his own electricity, then he should not be lazy to read the tax law and maybe require the service of an expert for adequate interpretation as government agencies sometimes in their quest to generate revenue apply the law in a blanket manner without considering the exceptions embedded in such law.

It's really unfair.Why should people pay for this?Can still will need to pay for air?In the near future, electricity will be generated by solar batteries. This fact. And I wonder what the tax service will do then

So only because he is still connected to the power grid he has to pay taxes even if he is not using any of the power provided by the grid but in fact he is giving back more power to the grid. This is totally absurd!
It is just like a hotel where you stay, but you eat food from the outside. And, you still have to pay for the food that is served to everyone else three times a day.

It is not clear what the intentions of this administration are. And I hope the community does not have sad stories in this case. Every change has purpose and intention. The thing to do is that we should be really awake in all cases so as not to have difficulties.

No it's not like that.

It's like booking an all-inclusive stay, where the hotel must be sure he has all the food to serve you fresh each day, you go out and eat in the city and by the end of the day you come with the bills and ask the hotel to pay for it. All this while demanding they keep your soup hot and fresh 24/h

This is exactly what all those individuals do, they produce energy when they can, the power company has to buy it no matter what but when push comes to shove the exact company who has reduced its power generation capabilities must somehow out of pixie dust produce more to feed them also.

Since we're at examples time let's do it like this, my family owns 3 butchers shops so all the vegans ...go away

You own a butcher shop and every day the farmer comes and drops two pig carcasses and the deal is that you make the settlement in money at the end of the month.
All it's good, the bio-eco-green meat is appreciated by your customers, but in the middle of the night on the 24th of December, you hear a bang at the door. It's the farmer:
"Sorry to bother you, but my pigs escaped and I can't find them. I've sold you 50 carcasses, can I have them back?"

Now, all of you how would you react? Cause I'm pretty sure 90% of you would kick his ass and the rest 10% would throw a hatchet after him  ;D

But ...
It has always been like this here...
Say government, taxes, corporation and the army of pitchforks is summoned to fight with the evil Sauron...

First of, .008 of a cent per kWh is a very small amount, so I wouldn't worry about it. But what is interesting to me is how can they charge you for "the transmission across their wires". Do you have your solar situated afar from your home? From what I know they are normally placed on the roof and you don't have to use any other wires apart your own ones. What am I missing here?

The government is greedy because after all we do not use electricity from the government, the government must be fair to this. Regardless of the situation and the rules, I think the man doesn't have to pay electricity taxes.

There is no government agent that have the power to tax me on the services I provide for myself.  The electricity power supply by government in my country is very poor  so majority of company and individual  Provide power by themselves so government doesn't tax us.

To me, paying for Government power source supplied while not used and at the same time utilizing your own generated solar energy is like what I can termed to be Double Taxation which is at the User's Detriment. Why can't he totally disconnect The Power supplied by Government and write them to have opted out of the usage? By this, extensive cost implication could be cubed.

Though I don't agree with it I know why he's paying taxes on his electricity.  This is very much like mining bitcoin.  You're producing something of value and you have to pay taxes on that.  It does seem far fetched to treat self generated electricity as an asset, but that's the government for you.  They want a piece of everything, sometimes multiple pieces over time. 

This is the norm in the US.  Not sure if other countries tax laws are similar. 

oh man , greedy government. in which contry You talking about..
Now i am afraid To suggest someone For solar panel on grid system... If i Tell rules of my contry i will dissuss now.
We use Ongrid electricity System in homes. We do not pay any tax if we generate own electric , only on what we consume + if we generate more power It back To Grid and we earn money What we sell.

Well I am amazed with this thing, how can a person in single capacity is manufacturing his own electricity. How is that possible? There is no option for any person in any country to manufacture electricity and government is unaware of it. But yes, many people have installed solar panels on their roofs and running their homes on it but still they must pay tax as they are living in that country.

He needs to check the details of the law as his home still connect to the grid, which probably the main idea of the tax as the article mentioned ;
Smart meters are a bad idea for people who want the freedom to produce their own electricity without being taxed for it
Currie may have to buy some batteries to store any excess of the electricity in order to power up his home at night rather than draw electricity back out of the grid.

Of course, that would be the logical way to do things and to get rid of the evil gubbermint

But there is a small problem, checking with google solar, which approximates the numbers of hours you get enough sunlight to produce energy, it seems that the region has no more than 1500 hours of sunlight, basically 5 hours a day on average.

He has consumed 600 kwh in April, we might consider 800 during winter, that means he is taking close to 30 kwh a day from the grid.

Only this will cost him about 24k$ in powerwalls.
And with the extra solar panels he needs to load those batteries, you can pretty much understand why he hasn't done it.

I don't think he should pay the electricity taxes because he doesn't consume it.
If he really doesn't consume it, why he should be responsible for the taxes. As a good citizen, he or she should obey the rules of government, but we do not  do that why we should responsible for that.

Fu*k the governments and their nonsense rules . >:(

Is this fair to ask the taxes to someone who are not using our services? but our governments works like this just similar to dictatorship even if we are in democratic country,we need to pay what they are asking for.

This can be resolved only by selecting the good leaders who can think only about the welfare of the citizen not about their economics

What kind of regulation was that?  :o I am sure there must be a brief explanation for this, but if that regulation doesn't fit to any category of the rules then their might be an anomaly either they do have a corrupt government already. I will gladly accept if that person is using his solar as a business and he really needs to pay because of his business.

Yes as the sun won't be available so much to cover their needs especially in winter season, there is no other choice if he doesn't want to buy an expensive generator which cost more + oil, although it's not a green energy but he can achieve the goal of self-sufficiency. However, not many options left and still connect to the grid and pay the taxes seems make sense till this point as maybe there is another thing to consider >>

What I think is, as far as he is not getting any electricity bill from government which he definitely should be receiving if he has really owns electricity generating by any means, it is well and good. But he cannot run from paying other taxes. If he thinks he can live without paying a single penny to the state, he needs to wake up from his dream soon.

If a men should generate his own electricity I think he should only have a small tax percentage of what he use to at least have a contribution to the government, but it should not be forced to pay as he generates his own and if he decides to pay a tax it would be his contribution for his community and if he is forced to it and pay for the exact amount of electricity if he uses the one given by the government even though he generates it then it is just unreasonable and should not be allowed by the person.

Tax is a complicated thing. It is a crime to evade tax, but you can avoid tax. I read this from the article; The “HST” is a tax that has been imposed on the homeowners of Canada, and Currie was unaware that his “net-zero” home doesn’t qualify for any exemption from this tax. He was intending to avoid tax but has not taken enough steps for him to avoid the tax. Please note that ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Most of us do not seek the views of tax experts.

I'm wondering how much he is paying to the government for the electricity which he's not using at all, we're having these counters which would count how many kilowatts you are consuming.

there is nothing critical here. perhaps there is a way to remove this tax as invalid and contrary to logic

Crazy crazy stuff really. I really don't know much of our lives the government wants to sit on. I might be the only one thinking this way. But isn't it baseless that this is happening? Why should a man pay for what he is not utilizing? This kinda defies very basic logic. Isn't there some way the man can raise some awareness and fight against this? But who's even paying attention these days?

perhaps it is a tax on some kind of fixed service, which is available even if a person does not use electricity

If the electricity supply of that country constant and cheap there is not that will prompt anyone to think of generating his or her own electricity. So the taxation department suppose to be ashamed of incompetent of the power companies instead of taxing such citizen. I will not pay such tax.

I dunno if these tax laws are specifically targeted at these kind of self-generated electricity users, or they are just a byproduct of the mainstream tax laws.

Obviously, I don't think that it's fair at all for the guy here. He's not using up any public resources or anything like that. He uses solar power, which is definitely not state owned. Having to pay taxes for something that is totally out of the control of the government anyways, and is totally self sufficient, is just absurd.

It's unlikely that these laws will be changed since it's currently probably just a few individuals with this issue. It definitely means that potential crypto miners that want to generate their own electricity in the future will be discouraged from staying in countries with these kind of taxes.

hmm, interesting logic, why pay for something, than not're using? I think it's a simple mistake that's easy to fix.

Those governments were greedy indeed and they should be provide to their citizen the comfortable of life but not utilize people however in my place i was see there was several people use solar panel to get electricity and luckly my government support them and never ask to them to pay electricity taxes

Which country is that?  The government must be very stupid to be doing such a thing. In my country if you’re using energy that is not being supplied by the government to you, you wouldn’t have to pay any more of energy bills or taxes to the government, but you will also have to go to the government to report that you no longer make use of their energy supply cause if you don’t it will continue to increase and when you decide to use it later, you will pay those bills that have gathered there.