Tax Expenditures And Environmental Policy

This timely book provides a critical examination of the ways in which tax expenditures can be best used in order to enhance their efficacy as instruments for the implementation of environmental policy.

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.

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.

Presents the paper "Tax Deductions, Environmental Policy, and the "Double Dividend" Hypothesis," written by Ian Parry and Antonio Bento in May 1999 for the World Bank. The authors find that incorporating tax-favored consumption in models of environmental tax swaps may overturn key results from earlier studies.

This book addresses the increasingly urgent question: How can governments be made more accountable for the quality of their environmental stewardship? It explores: Enhanced national State of the Environment reporting and integration of environmental outcomes in key national indicators. Mainstreaming environmental goals, targets, and risks by integrating them in fiscal policy and the annual budget—a government’s most important policy instrument. Promoting sustainability by progressively exposing and eliminating harmful tax and expenditure policies, putting a price on pollution, and providing environmental public goods. Civil society environmental monitoring. The book combines in-depth assessment of the latest climate/green budgeting literature and country practices with discussion of how to implement green fiscal policies. The framework is deliberately ambitious given the severity, scale, and urgency of climate change and biodiversity loss. The book will be of interest to ministry of finance, budget, and planning officials, to environment sector agencies, oversight institutions, international organizations, civil society organizations, and to academics and students in the fields of environmental studies, development studies, economics, public finance, and public policy.

This volume explores 25 case studies of fiscal measures that have been adopted successfully by governments in North America and Europe to reduce environmental degradation. Each study lays out the implementation issues and problems faced, and compares the effectiveness of the measure against its expectations. The political implications are also discussed, and the text draws on common themes and lessons to be gained from the measures so far. The volume is divided into sections on energy, agriculture, air and water pollution, and waste management.

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.