TEHRAN - The Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA) has announced that clearing cryptocurrency mining systems and equipment requires necessary permits from the Ministry of Industry, Mining and Trade.

According to Mehrdad Jamal Arvanaghi, IRICA deputy for customs affairs, order registration is one of the essential steps for clearing such equipment which are classified as belonging to the group of automated data processing machines, data transfer machines and data checking machines.

“Computers, laptops, disc readers, and other data processing equipment, such as motherboards, graphic cards as well as audio and video processing equipment also belong to this category,” he added.

Arvanaghi further explained that importers of such commodities are required by law to apply exclusively to the Ministry of Industry, Mining and Trade in order to obtain an "entry permit" and an "order registration", after doing which customs are obliged to clear their goods.

In late July, the government approved cryptocurrency mining as an industrial activity, and announced that cryptocurrency miners should get necessary licenses from the Industry, Mining and Trade Ministry and all the risks regarding the usage or mining of such currencies is on the involved parties and not subject to government or banking system guarantees.

According to the government decision, mining cryptocurrencies, like any other industrial activities, will be subject to tax rules and miners can only be exempted from tax if they return part of their earned currencies into the country’s economic cycle.

Iran has been recently wrestling with over consumption of electricity by cryptocurrency mining farms across the country as many have rushed to mine coins due to cheap electricity.
In late June, Energy Ministry announced that due to bitcoin mining processes the country’s electricity consumption increased by seven-percent this summer.

Consequently, the ministry proposed that the costs of electricity for cryptocurrency miners should be determined based on electricity export rates.

Following the Energy Ministry, Iran’s Power Generation and Distribution Company (known as TAVANIR) also announced that using electricity for mining cryptocurrencies is illegal and those household or commercial subscribers that use electricity for such activities will be cut off from the national grid.

EF/MA