Proposal to amend and supplement the Mining Act (Official Gazette of the RS No 61/10, 62/10-corrected, 76/10 and 57/12) - hereinafter referred to as ZRud-1 - and the Regulation on Mining Concession Fees and Reclamation Funds (Official Gazette of the RS, No 91/11).
In order to assess concession fees for mining rights, the competent Ministry of Mines has to issue approximately 160 decisions each year (data from the Mineral Bulletin), which is associated with relatively high costs. We believe that such an assessment could be dealt with in a more straightforward manner, as is the case, for example, with tax assessment procedures, where taxes are paid on the basis of a tax return prepared by the taxpayer himself and sent electronically to the competent tax office (see 51. This method of calculation and payment is already an established procedure for taxpayers and could therefore be quickly applied to the field of concessions. It is unacceptable that, on the one hand, taxes are calculated and recorded electronically, while, on the other hand, similar levies are still calculated and recorded manually. A move to self-assessment of concession and sanitation levies would undoubtedly shorten and cheapen the procedures for assessing and paying these levies. While this is a cheapening of procedures on the part of the State, it is also indirectly cheaper for the taxpayer.
In order to simplify the procedures for the assessment and payment of mining concession and rehabilitation fees, it would be necessary to amend and supplement some of the provisions of the Mining Law and to amend the Regulation on mining concession and rehabilitation funds (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia No 91/11) in its entirety. We consider that the provisions of Article 52 of the Mining Law and the provisions of Articles 7 to 13, 18 and 21 to 24 of the abovementioned Regulation should be amended or supplemented.
Amendments and additions to the provisions of the ZRud-1:- the provision of Article 52(2) of the ZRud-1, which now reads as follows: 'The manner and conditions for the payment of the mining concession fee and the provision and payment of the reserved funds for reclamation to the obligor referred to in the preceding paragraph shall be determined by a decision to be issued ex officio by the Ministry responsible for mining, in accordance with the regulation referred to in the third paragraph of Article 53 and the regulation referred to in the third paragraph of Article 54 of the present Act and the provisions of the concession contract."- the amended provision of Article 52(2) of the Mining Act-1 should read: "The obligor referred to in the preceding paragraph, in accordance with the regulation referred to in Article 53(3) and the regulation referred to in Article 54(3) of this Act and the provisions of the concession contract, shall calculate the mining concession fee and the provision and payment of the funds reserved for reclamation on its own."- the amended provision of Article 52(3) of the Mining Act-1, which now reads: "The decision referred to in the preceding paragraph may be appealed, which shall be decided by the Government. The decision of the Government shall be subject to an administrative dispute."- amended provision 52(3) to read: "The obligor referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article shall submit the return referred to in the preceding paragraph to the administrative authority in electronic form in the manner and within the time limits prescribed by the regulation referred to in Article 53 and the regulation referred to in the third paragraph of Article 54 of this Law". It would be even more rational to transmit the said returns to the tax authority, which has the appropriate electronic software and overview of the turnover and a system for recovery.
If the proposed amendment is adopted, it should be written into the transitional provisions of the amendment that the concession fee for 2012 is to be assessed in the same way as for 2011 or according to Article 33 of the Regulation on mining concession fees and funds for reclamation (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia, No 91/11), with the proviso that the holders of mining rights who had a mining right on 1 January 2011 are to be assessed in accordance with the concession agreement. This is because the cited regulation unconstitutionally and unlawfully interfered with existing contractual relations.  Otherwise, up to 160 appeals against assessment decisions can be expected.Amendments to the Mining Concession Fees and Reclamation Means Regulation
If the proposed amendment to the provisions of the Mining Law is adopted, the provisions of the Mining Concession and Reclamation Means Regulation in Articles 7 to 13 should be amended in their entirety. In doing so, the provisions of the Tax Procedure Act may be taken into account mutatis mutandis, or the Regulation may also refer to this Act if the tax authority would be competent for the collection of concession fees.
If the proposal for self-assessment of concession fees (Articles 7 to 13) is adopted, and otherwise, it should also be stated in the transitional provisions of the regulation that holders of mining rights who held a mining right on 1 January 2011 should take into account the concession contracts for the period until the expiry of the concessions in the calculation. Otherwise, the validity of Article 33 of the current regulation should be extended. Otherwise, up to 160 appeals against assessment decisions can be expected. We propose the following provision of the Regulation, to be written into the transitional provisions: 'If the concessionaire has a number of points per unit of mineral extracted fixed in the concession contract, for the period until the expiry of the concessions, the number of points for a certain type of mineral (Tms) shall not take into account the number of points according to the table of prices and remuneration for minerals set out in Annex 2 to this Regulation, but the number of points in the concession contract.'. Before the entry into force of the Mining Law and the Regulation on mining concession fees and reclamation funds, the administrative authority had to take the concession contract into account when assessing concession fees, but after the entry into force of the Mining Law, this is no longer the case, or is only provided for in Article 52(2) of the Mining Law, which does not apply to those who had mining rights in force on the date of entry into force of the Mining Law. These holders should be subject to the relevant transitional provision of the Act. Otherwise, the previous law provided in Article 19(4) that the concession contract shall also regulate the payment for the mining right. Therefore, all contracts concluded under this Law also contain the amount of payments or the number of points of payment for mining rights. The previously applicable Regulation on the method of determining the remuneration for the mining right (Official Gazette of the Republic of Slovenia No 43/00, 41/02, 52/03) also clearly stipulated in Article 9 that the remuneration for the concession was to be determined on the basis of the concession act and the concession contract. In addition to the above, the new law changed the fundamental purpose of that part of the concession fee which was previously paid on the surface of the extraction area. Now the holder of the mining right no longer has an interest in managing the space economically and in such a way as to have a minimum open area on which to carry out the works at a given time, since the level of the payment for open space is no longer different from that for non-open space. Only the obligation of ongoing rehabilitation can force it to do so now. The provisions of the new amended Regulation should therefore revert to the previous criterion for the concession fee, which was different for open space and non-open space.
If the proposal for self-accounting of the rehabilitation funds is adopted, the provisions of Articles 18 and 21 to 24 of the Mining Concession and Rehabilitation Regulation should also be amended in their entirety so that this accounting is reasonably equivalent to the accounting of concession fees. The recovery of rehabilitation fees should also be aligned with the accounting.
If the proposal for self-accounting of rehabilitation fees is adopted, the transitional provisions of the Regulation should also provide for the appropriate treatment of existing holders of mining rights who have not yet paid rehabilitation funds or provided bank guarantees, so that they are required to do so within a specified time limit, and Article 35 of the Regulation should be deleted. As this is too complex a matter and is subject to prior decisions by the competent authorities, we are unable to propose specific provisions here.
The proposed amendments and additions to ZRud-1 and the Regulation on the method of determining the payment for mining rights should be seen as a proposal to simplify and streamline the procedures to be dealt with under the abridged procedure.