Environmental tax

An environmental tax, ecotax (short for ecological taxation), or green tax is a tax levied on activities which are considered to be harmful to the environment and is intended to promote environmentally friendly activities via economic incentives. One notable example is a carbon tax. Such a policy can complement or avert the need for regulatory (command and control) approaches. Often, an ecotax policy proposal may attempt to maintain overall tax revenue by proportionately reducing other taxes (e.g. taxes on wages and income or property taxes); such proposals are known as a green tax shift towards ecological taxation. Ecotaxes address the failure of free markets to consider environmental impacts.[1]

Ecotaxes are examples of Pigouvian taxes, which are taxes on goods whose production or consumption creates external costs or externalities. An example might be philosopher Thomas Pogge's proposed Global Resources Dividend.[2][3]

  1. ^ "Environmental Taxation A Guide for Policy Makers" (PDF). Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
  2. ^ Pogge, Thomas. "Global Resources Dividend". thomaspogge.com. Archived from the original on 2015-03-29. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
  3. ^ Pogge, Thomas W. (January 2001). "Eradicating Systemic Poverty: Brief for a global resources dividend" (PDF). Journal of Human Development. 2 (1): 59–77. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.488.2173. doi:10.1080/14649880120050246. S2CID 154946253. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 13 March 2015.

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