Tax Law and the Environment: A Multidisciplinary and Worldwide Perspective takes a multidisciplinary approach to explore the ways how tax policy can is used solve environmental problems throughout the world, using a multi-jurisdictional and multidisciplinary approach. Environmental taxation involves using taxes to impose a cost on environmentally harmful activities or tax subsidies to provide preferred tax treatment to more sustainable alternatives to those harmful activities. This book provides a detailed analysis of environmental taxation, with examples from around the world. As the extraction, processing and use of energy use resources is has been a major cause of environmental harm, this book explores the taxation and subsidization of both fossil fuels and renewable energy. Its analysis of the past, present, and future potential of environmental taxation will help policymakers move economies toward sustainability, as well as and informing students, academics, and citizens about tax solutions for pressing environmental issues.
This report provides actionable advice on how to design and implement fiscal policies for both development and climate action. Building on more than two decades of research in development and environmental economics, it argues that well-designed environmental tax reforms are especially valuable in developing countries, where they can reduce emissions, increase domestic revenues, and generate positive welfare effects such as cleaner water, safer roads, and improvements in human health. Moreover, these reforms need not harm competitiveness. New empirical evidence from Indonesia and Mexico suggests that under certain conditions, raising fuel prices can actually increase firm productivity. Finally, the report discusses the role of fiscal policy in strengthening resilience to climate change. It provides evidence that preventive public investments and measures to build fiscal buffers can help safeguard stability and growth in the face of rising climate risks. In this way, environmental tax reforms and climate risk-management strategies can lay the much-needed fiscal foundation for development and climate action.
Although the future extent and effects of global climate change remain uncertain, the expected damages are not zero, and risks of serious environmental and macroeconomic consequences rise with increasing atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Despite the uncertainties, reducing emissions now makes sense, and a carbon tax is the simplest, most effective, and least costly way to do this. At the same time, a carbon tax would provide substantial new revenues which may be badly needed, given historically high debt-to-GDP levels, pressures on social security and medical budgets, and calls to reform taxes on personal and corporate income. This book is about the practicalities of introducing a carbon tax, set against the broader fiscal context. It consists of thirteen chapters, written by leading experts, covering the full range of issues policymakers would need to understand, such as the revenue potential of a carbon tax, how the tax can be administered, the advantages of carbon taxes over other mitigation instruments and the environmental and macroeconomic impacts of the tax. A carbon tax can work in the United States. This volume shows how, by laying out sound design principles, opportunities for broader policy reforms, and feasible solutions to specific implementation challenges.
There's a simple, straightforward way to cut carbon emissions and prevent the most disastrous effects of climate change-and we're rejecting it because of irrational political fears. That's the central argument of The Case for a Carbon Tax, a clear-eyed, sophisticated analysis of climate change policy. Shi-Ling Hsu examines the four major approaches to curbing CO2: cap-and-trade; command and control regulation; government subsidies of alternative energy; and carbon taxes. Weighing the economic, social, administrative, and political merits of each, he demonstrates why a tax is currently the most effective policy. Hsu does not claim that a tax is the perfect or only solution-but that unlike the alternatives, it can be implemented immediately and paired effectively with other approaches. In fact, the only real barrier is psychological. While politicians can present subsidies and cap-and-trade as "win-win" solutions, the costs of a tax are immediately apparent. Hsu deftly explores the social and political factors that prevent us from embracing this commonsense approach. And he shows why we must get past our hang-ups if we are to avert a global crisis.
This paper discusses the role of, and provides practical country-level guidance on, fiscal policies for implementing climate strategies using a unique and transparent tool laying out trade-offs among policy options.
Without significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will cause substantial damage to the environment and the economy. The scope of the threat demands a close look at the policies capable of reducing the harm. Confronting the Climate Challenge presents a unique framework for evaluating the impacts of a range of U.S. climate-policy options, both for the economy overall and for particular household groups, industries, and regions. Lawrence Goulder and Marc Hafstead focus on four alternative approaches for reducing carbon dioxide emissions: a revenue-neutral carbon tax, a cap-and-trade program, a clean energy standard, and an increase in the federal gasoline tax. They demonstrate that these policies—if designed correctly—not only can achieve emissions reductions at low cost but also can avoid placing undesirable burdens on low-income household groups or especially vulnerable industries. Goulder and Hafstead apply a multiperiod, economy-wide general equilibrium model that is distinct in its attention to investment dynamics and to interactions between climate policy and the tax system. Exploiting the unique features of the model, they contrast the shorter- and longer-term policy impacts and focus on alternative ways of feeding back—or “recycling”—policy-generated revenues to the private sector. Their work shows how careful policy design, including the judicious use of policy-generated revenues, can achieve desired reductions in carbon dioxide emissions at low cost, avoid uneven impacts across household income groups, and prevent losses of profit in the most vulnerable U.S. industries. The urgency of the climate problem demands comprehensive action, and Confronting the Climate Challenge offers important insights that can help elevate policy discussions and spur needed efforts on the climate front.
This timely book brings clarity to the debate on the new legal phenomenon of environmental border tax adjustments. It will help form a better understanding of the role and limits these taxes have on environmental policies in combating global environmental challenges, such as climate change.
ÔIngeniously organized in a life cycle format, the Handbook covers environmental taxation concepts, design, acceptance, implementation, and impact. The universal themes discussed in each area will appeal to a broad range of readers.Õ Ð Larry Kreiser, Cleveland State University, US ÔThis book is a smart and useful readerÕs guide providing analytical tools for a full comprehension of environmental taxes, with an interdisciplinary approach that looks at all the different phases of environmental taxation: from the design to the implementation, the political acceptance and the impact on the economy. The authorsÕ effort is very successful in endowing academicians, policy makers and the general public with an excellent proof of the effectiveness of environmental taxes and green tax reforms.Õ Ð Alberto Majocchi, University of Pavia, Italy ÔPutting the words ÒenvironmentÓ next to ÒtaxationÓ might not always be the flavour of the month, but no modern society can ignore the value of the natural environment and the need to maintain its good quality and no competitive economy can prosper without the necessary tax revenues to function. Environmental taxation offers the prospect of moving towards a more resource-efficient economy, where preference is given to tax more what we burn, less what we earn. I welcome this contribution to the literature.Õ Ð Commissioner Connie Hedegaard, European Commission ÔThe Milne and Andersen volume provides a splendid treatment of environmental taxation that encompasses the basic conceptual issues, problems of tax design and implementation, and several insightful case studies that show how environmental taxes actually work in practice. It is the best overall treatment of environmental taxation available: comprehensive, rigorous, and readable.Õ Ð Wallace Oates, University of Maryland, US The Handbook of Research on Environmental Taxation captures the state of the art of research on environmental taxation. Written by 36 specialists in environmental taxation from 16 countries, it takes an interdisciplinary and international approach, focusing on issues that are universal to using taxation to achieve environmental goals. The Handbook explores the conceptual foundations of environmental taxation, essential elements for designing environmental tax measures, factors that influence the acceptance of environmental taxation, the variety of ways to implement environmental taxes, their environmental and economic impact and, finally, the larger question of the role of taxation among other policy approaches to environmental protection. Intermixing theory with case studies, the Handbook offers readers lessons that can be applied around the world. It identifies key bodies of research for people who are already working in the field or entering the field and highlights issues that call for more research in the future. With systematic analysis of key issues in environmental taxation, this book will appeal to researchers, governments, think tanks, NGOs, and academics in law, economics, political science and public finance, as well as students specializing in environmental taxation and other market-based instruments.
The book combines perspectives from leading environmental taxation scholars on both the theory and impact of different policies. It covers topics such as theoretical assumptions of environmental taxes; the relationship between environmental taxes and t
This report draws on case studies to explore the relationship between environmentally-related taxation and innovation to see whether taxation can spur innovation and if so, what types.
