DNR Establishes Online Portal for Miners to Pay Royalties

All miners working on state land must report and, if required, pay annual production royalties regardless of mine size or income. Production royalties are paid to the state in exchange for and to preserve the right to extract and possess minerals such as gold, silver, copper, quartz, and jade—to name some of the minerals mined from state land. In Alaska, production royalties are 3 percent of a miner’s net income as calculated through the mining license tax. From that 3 percent, miners can deduct the rent they pay to the state for the claim/lease that produced the mineral. Production royalties are due May 1 of every year.

“Because the state calculates production royalties from mining license tax, miners sometimes get confused and do not realize they need to do both,” says Aleria Knudson, production royalty program geologist with the Division of Mining, Land, and Water’s Mineral Property Management section. “By offering filing in the same location, we are hoping to eliminate that confusion.”

The new system allows miners to file production royalty returns immediately after they calculate and file their mining license tax. It autofills into the production royalty return the repetitive information miners must enter for their mining license tax. It also provides security to protect sensitive tax information involved in the calculation of production royalties and allows for production royalty payments online.

For miners who prefer submitting their production royalty returns using the traditional system, paper forms will still be accepted by the Fairbanks and Anchorage DNR mining offices.