I hope you are right about miners being exempted, or even just a lower rate would be more palatable.

Actually you are also right about the bean counters too.

I still remember the many times that senior management ask the accountants to do financial forecast to support investing in certain business ventures. Sadly enough most of the times the only way you can do that is to dream up some future revenue stream that is totally unattainable. Of course they all eventually failed. This is looking more and more like it is someone's ill conceived finanical forecast. Perhaps to attain a certain revenue level, Ecuador could only hit their forecast target by slapping mining companies with this ridiculous tax.

It is sad but it does happen in the business world, sure looks like the same with government budgeting too.