First published in 1997, this volume describes the theoretical underpinning of the Polluter Pays Principle as a means to deliver environmental benefits and reduce perverse incentives. By systematically examining each major sector of the economy to identify environmental issues, it considers how the principle can be applied to the Irish fiscal system and then proposes alterations to the system in an environmentally friendly and socially sensitive direction. Sectors explored include agriculture and forestry, environmental services for wastewater treatment, water supply and for waste disposal, energy, transport, tourism and construction.
As the Polluter-Pays Principle is a fundamental principle of cost allocation, its analysis covers a substantial part of the vast field of environmental resource allocation. This report, originally published in 1975, presents a selection of relevant theoretical and practical analyses.
This book shows why a carbon tax is the most efficient and fair way to address the major cause of climate change. It explains how a carbon tax reform can help low-income households. And it argues that carbon tax is market based policy that should be supported across the political spectrum.
An engaging and enlightening account of taxation told through lively, dramatic, and sometimes ludicrous stories drawn from around the world and across the ages Governments have always struggled to tax in ways that are effective and tolerably fair. Sometimes they fail grotesquely, as when, in 1898, the British ignited a rebellion in Sierra Leone by imposing a tax on huts—and, in repressing it, ended up burning the very huts they intended to tax. Sometimes they succeed astonishingly, as when, in eighteenth-century Britain, a cut in the tax on tea massively increased revenue. In this entertaining book, two leading authorities on taxation, Michael Keen and Joel Slemrod, provide a fascinating and informative tour through these and many other episodes in tax history, both preposterous and dramatic—from the plundering described by Herodotus and an Incan tax payable in lice to the (misremembered) Boston Tea Party and the scandals of the Panama Papers. Along the way, readers meet a colorful cast of tax rascals, and even a few tax heroes. While it is hard to fathom the inspiration behind such taxes as one on ships that tended to make them sink, Keen and Slemrod show that yesterday’s tax systems have more in common with ours than we may think. Georgian England’s window tax now seems quaint, but was an ingenious way of judging wealth unobtrusively. And Tsar Peter the Great’s tax on beards aimed to induce the nobility to shave, much like today’s carbon taxes aim to slow global warming. Rebellion, Rascals, and Revenue is a surprising and one-of-a-kind account of how history illuminates the perennial challenges and timeless principles of taxation—and how the past holds clues to solving the tax problems of today.
This Open Access book presents a multidisciplinary perspective to increase our understanding of climate policies that are rooted in the natural moral inclinations of people, families and firms. Which policies prevent a widening gap between higher and lower educated people? Which policy instruments are there, and how could they be used? What is the role of free entrepreneurship? In this book, academics from different fields have brought together their knowledge and expertise to reflect on the following three questions: How are the polarised positions on climate change of different groups related to their moral outlook, world view, tradition, cultural norms and values? What is a good distribution of responsibilities between firms, households and the government relating to climate change? What are possible avenues where the climate policies are a natural extension of moral inclinations of families and firms, such as the stewardship for the natural environment and the climate? This book will be of interest to policy and decision-makers, students of social and behavioural sciences, and those interested climate change policies and how this effects our lives
This paper explores how fiscal policy can affect medium- to long-term growth. It identifies the main channels through which fiscal policy can influence growth and distills practical lessons for policymakers. The particular mix of policy measures, however, will depend on country-specific conditions, capacities, and preferences. The paper draws on the Fund’s extensive technical assistance on fiscal reforms as well as several analytical studies, including a novel approach for country studies, a statistical analysis of growth accelerations following fiscal reforms, and simulations of an endogenous growth model.
Energy taxes can produce substantial environmental and revenue benefits and are an important component of countries’ fiscal systems. Although the principle that these taxes should reflect global warming, air pollution, road congestion, and other adverse environmental impacts of energy use is well established, there has been little previous work providing guidance on how countries can put this principle into practice. This book develops a practical methodology, and associated tools, to show how the major environmental damages from energy can be quantified for different countries and used to design the efficient set of energy taxes.
"This book analyzes the regulation of environmental loss and damage. It does so from a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective, examining both public and private law aspects. It delves into conceptual and specific legal issues concerning liability, compensation and restoration of damage in different sectors and jurisdictions, as well as taking into account the contributions of economic analysis in this field of regulation. Specific attention has been devoted to the role that liability and insurance may play in terms of mitigation and adaptation to climate change, as well as the prevention of damage from natural hazards. The scope of analysis encompasses national as well as supranational and international regimes. In particular, there are two interrelated and very promising developments in the evolving understandings in this field that merit special focus: possible legal transplants and "cross-fertilization" between legal systems, on the one hand; and the current dialectic between global and local law in the environmental field, on the other."-- Page 4 de la couverture.
