a review of green taxes

Using Tax to Make Britain a Green and Pleasant Land
Green taxes - the latest buzz words in fiscal policy. What are they and why are they so popular? More immediately, is Gordon Brown going to use them in the Budget? Table of Comparison of Green Taxes in selected European Countries

2- http://www.essential.org/FOE/envirotax/taxbooklet/index.html

Citizens' Guide to Environmental Tax Shifting
One of the most fundamental policy changes ever undertaken by national governments is underway, a tax revolution that could transform economic, social and environmental dynamics in all nations. It has been called a tax shift, green tax reform and ecological taxing. Whatever you call it, its goal is to revise the fundamental purpose of taxes. Instead of swaths of revenue extracted at will from people and commerce, tax shifting transforms revenue collection into an exquisite policy tool that can enhance the environment, reduce governmental demands and expenditures, improve societal welfare and promote innovation and jobs — and all that happens before the money is spent on government programs.

3- http://www.progress.org/archive/shift03.htm

Green Tax Shift Advocated
Call to End Subsides for Eco-Destruction Government subsidies for ecologically harmful activities like forest clear-cutting and industrial fishing means that the public is paying to destroy the environment, declares the Worldwatch Institute. In addition to proposing the elimination of such subsidies, a new publication by the Washington-based think-tank proposes taxing the sources of environmental ills, such as pollution.

4- http://www.ilsr.org/ecotax/greentax.html

Green Taxes
In the past 25 years we have substantially increased taxes on labor and modestly increased taxes on income while allowing pollution and resource depletion to remain largely untaxed. The result is that we have created a tax system that encourages resource depletion and discourages investments in machinery and labor. A worldwide discussion is taking place about how to move away from taxing "goods" like investments and employment, that is, activities we would like more of, and toward taxing "bads", like pollution, that we would like to discourage. Green taxes are not new. In the last 15 years such taxes have been used for two primary purposes: * to generate revenue to pay for damages created from past pollution and for measures to reduce future pollution * to change behavior A third type of green tax discussed below has been gaining visibility. It combines a significant pollution tax with a major restructuring of the tax system to make the overall economy more efficient. This process is called "tax shifting".

5- http://odin.dep.no/fin/publ/policy/

Policies for a better environment and high employment
An English Summary of The Norwegian Green Tax Commission Oslo, Norway 1996 Main points in the mandate were to investigate how to change the present tax system away from taxation of labour and towards activities that imply increased use of resources and harmful emissions in a longer term perspective, i.e. into the next Century. The Commission was asked to keep its proposals for tax reform within a revenue neutral framework. It was also asked to consider Norway's role as a large exporter of energy and the desire of Norwegian authorities to be an international "instigator" regarding both employment - and environmental policies. The Commission recommends a large number of changes and increases over a broad range of green taxes, a main motive being to transfer well established principles of cost-efficiency into practical policies for a better environment and high employment. Furthermore, it is proposed that a number of subsidies with negative incentives on the environment should be abolished or reduced over time. The revenue from green taxes or reduced subsidies ("negative green taxes") should be used to reduce taxation of labour (pay roll taxes) or for other measures that will ease adjustment - and structural problems in the labour market.

6- http://www.progress.org/banneker/shift.html

The Green Tax Shift
Across Europe and the United States, the Green Tax Shift is gaining momentum. More and more people are realizing that while pollution may mean nothing to a big corporation, dollars mean a lot. The moral appeals of the early environmental movement are now being supplemented by an approach that hits much closer to the root of the problem -- money. Americans may not all be environmentalists, but anyone can understand the common sense behind an idea like "tax bads, not goods" -- go after pollution before you go after my wages, hit resource depleters before you hit my house, swat the land speculators before you swat my children's books, and so on. Within five years, the Green Tax Shift will be the major focus of all environmental activism -- our government is regulating destructive activities less, enforcing anti-pollution laws less, but you know one thing it will never lose interest in, and that's Taxation.

7- http://www.iisd.ca/linkages/consume/skou.html

THE USE OF ECONOMIC INSTRUMENTS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY - A HALF HEARTED AFFAIR
As a key to a more sustainable development the use of economic instruments for environmental policy has been on the agenda for about eight years. Despite of that, a recent OECD survey recorded only a modest increase in their use since the mid-1980s. In particular the Nordic counries have increased their use of economic instruments, but with a few exceptions it has been a somewhat half-hearted affair. Economic imstruments have often been applied on the basis of the principle of the least political resistan ce. Using Wilson's regulation theory (1980), this paper analyses how the costs and benefits of regulations and particular policy-instruments affect the use and design of economic instruments. The outcome has been green taxes that are often fiscally biased , which are too low compared with the externalities they should price and which address the smaller rather than the larger polluters, granting the latter substantial exemptions. However the paper does also shortly suggest a strategy to overcome these defi ciencies, underlining the dynamics and the possible 'double dividend' to be achieved from the use of economic instruments.

8- http://www.utoronto.ca/env/papers/macdon/macdon1.htm

Green taxation and environmental policy
The purpose of this paper is not to review the considerable literature on the theoretical advantages and disadvantages of green taxation or on the related topic of the factors which lead governments to select one policy instrument over another. Instead, my purpose is to address, in a very initial and exploratory manner, a different question. How does the use of an instrument such as taxation to complement or replace existing instruments change the political dynamic amongst state and non-state actors within a given policy community? More specifically, if tax is used as an environmental policy instrument, thus giving finance departments a larger role relative to environment departments than is the case when command regulation is used, what are the implications for the effectiveness of policy negotiated by the environmental policy community?

9- http://www.me3.org/projects/greentax/lowincome.html

The Effect of the Minnesota Ecological Tax Shift on Low Income Households
The Energy Efficiency and Pollution Reduction Act (EEPRA) is a revenue neutral measure that proposes to increase energy taxes by $1.5 billion and to reduce existing taxes on labor or income by an equal amount. The bill is also sectoral neutral, that is, the additional revenues generated from the business sector will be returned in business tax reductions and the additional revenues generated from the household sector will be returned to the household sector. Business taxes will be reduced through a 20 percent reduction in the employer contribution to FICA (Social Security and Medicare). An important question in designing a tax shift is its impact on low income households. The proposed carbon tax is in effect a sales tax and a sales tax is usually regressive. However, in this case there are two sides to the equation: a tax increase and a tax decrease. Therefore EEPRA can be designed to hold harmless or even to aid low income households.

10- http://www.me3.org/projects/greentax/tellus/tellus.html

Carbon Taxes with Tax Reductions in Minnesota
1. WHY ECOLOGICAL TAX REFORM?
2. CARBON TAXES AT THE STATE LEVEL: RATIONALE AND DESIGN
3. THE EFFECTS OF A CARBON TAX ON THE MINNESOTA ENERGY SECTOR
4. THE ECONOMIC ANALYSIS

11- http://www.facsnet.org/cgi-bin/rt_back.cgi?rownumber=27

Can Market Forces Be Put in Harness to Protect the Environment?
This election year, parties and candidates are taking positions on environmental protection and its economic costs. With the EPA reporting that we re spending more than $120 billion a year to meet federal environmental laws, here s what you should know about new approaches to environmental cleanup. Veteran FACS teacher Rob Stavins outlines the concepts and offers reporting tips.

12- http://www.idrc.org.sg/eepsea/publications/spaper/Glover.htm

Research Issues in Environmental Tax Reform
If EEPSEA's long range goal can be described in a few words, it would be to answer two questions: "What would a sustainable economy look like?" and "How do we get there from here?". Answers to these questions must be based on answers to smaller ones. In many OECD countries, up to half of all capital generated passes through the tax system. It is also increasingly recognized that the effects of the tax system on efficiency, growth, savings, investment and employment are much greater than previously realized. Developing countries are also going through significant changes in thinking about taxation as a result of structural adjustment and trade liberalization, which have reduced traditional sources of tax revenue. Environmental considerations, particularly concern over the effects of various subsidies and the debate on trade and environment have focused even more attention on the tax system. Logically, one of the questions we need to answer is "What kind of a tax system would a sustainable economy have?". This paper sketches out some of the research issues involved in analyzing environmental tax reform (ETR). It is a very informal paper, which takes the form of a table and several pages of explanatory notes. Its purpose is to provoke discussion about researchable issues that might be addressed by EEPSEA-supported researchers in SE Asia.

13- http://www.green.ca/english/members/waste_tax.html

The Effectiveness of Taxes in Reducing Waste
A report to the Green Party on using taxes to reduce waste: Several European Union countries (see below) are starting to introduce taxes on: * different types of waste; * on short-life products, such as one-way disposable packaging, and; * particularly hazardous products, such as batteries, which generate intractable waste streams. The Different Purposes of Waste Taxes Waste taxes can be cost covering charges where the revenues are used either to pay for waste disposal services, such as the Dutch household waste tax, or to finance recycling services, such as the Swedish battery charge. Or, they can be incentive taxes levied to change environmentally damaging behaviour. Revenues are often used to further encourage behavioural change. One example is the German toxic waste charge. The third way that a waste tax can be used is as a fiscal environmental tax, whereby surplus revenues from the tax can be used to finance budget deficits or shift taxes from labour to resources. Such a change in the tax system which shifts taxes away from labour and capital and onto the use of resources is known as an ecological tax reform (ETR).

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