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Introduction

Environmental taxes refer to the long-term economic, social and environmental gains and increase the incentives to protect the global environmental. (Australian Government Department of Environment and Heritage, 2005) [Online]. It is also known as tax shift, green tax reform and ecological taxing (Hanno Beck et.el, 1998) [Online]. The tax revenue collected from the people and business commercial are transfer into the inquisition policy tool that used to increase the quality of environment, reduce the demands and expenditure, increase more beneficial activities to society and welfare and promote the innovation (Hanno Beck et.el, 1998) [Online]. Tax shift is a tool that with the intention of encouraging the sustainable activities and discouraging environmentally damaging behaviour and improve the overall the tax equity (Mainewatch Institute, no date) [Online]. The ideas are based on current economic trend, which fail to account the environmental damages because sending incorrect price signal, and the tax system creates counterproductive incentives (Mainewatch Institute, no date) [Online]. Tax shift are trying solution to reduce the level of taxes on production activities and increase the level of taxes on unproductive activities such as pollution, consumption product in order to promote the tax equity (Mainewatch Institute, no date) [Online]. Most of environmental taxes are designed to meet the objective of revenue neutral to raise revenue from new, untaxed or under taxed sources thus reduce the current taxes to yield the same dollar return to the government (Mainewatch Institute, no date) [Online]. The important of revenue neutrality is to identify the political resistance to generate revenue from the overall taxes to ensure the sufficient fund for the government program (Mainewatch Institute, no date) [Online]. The good tax system is predictability and stability with the built into tax shifting plans (Mainewatch Institute, no date) [Online]. It can be very challenging to predict the expected returns from the new forms of taxation, which introduce by the government and especially in estimating how much the incentives effects is needed thus reduce the revenue (Mainewatch Institute, no date) ...read more.

Middle

Nitrogen Dioxide Tax By late 1980, Sweden have serious problem because suffer the acidification of soil and water due to the nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide (International Institute for Sustainable Development, No Date) [Online]. Acidification has damaged the ecosystem, killing the animal, damaged the forest and degenerating the building and historic monuments in Southern Sweden (Stephan Barg et.el, 2000) [Online]. Around 20% of forest have damaged because of the land is so acidic (International Institute for Sustainable Development, No Date) [Online]. Therefore, Sweden began to impose the tax on the nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide on January 1,1992 to reduce the emission from combustion plants at a faster pace than was expected by minimum emission limits and licenses for specific plants (Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen, 2002) [Online]. It is necessarily to install the expensive monitoring equipment to measure the NOx emission and the cost of installing the equipment is estimated SEK 300,000 per plant which was quite substantial (Jean-Philippe Barde and Stephen Smith, 1997) [Online]. The plants subject to pay tax have installed the equipment to assess measure the tax properly (U.S Environmental Protect Agency, 1999) [Online]. Therefore, the charge only applied at largest and power-heating plant however the reimbursements are not included excluding the monitoring, measurement and the administrative cost (Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen, 2002) [Online]. Mostly the largest power planting, waste incinerating plant, chemical and metal industries are liable to pay tax when they have a capacity of 10 megawatts (Mw) and produce more than 50 gigawatts hours (GWh) (Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen, 2002) [Online]. However there are some exemptions for the direct industrial combustion process such as melting of raw material or combustion in oven for the refining crude oil because it is hard to diffuse and too costly to measure (Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen, 2002) [Online]. The plant that produces less than 50 GWh is exempt because it gives competitive advantages to the small plant. ...read more.

Conclusion

Available from: World Wide Web http://www.mori.com/polls/2003/meb1.shtml [Accessed: 20 February 2006] Jutexpo UK. 2003. The Plastic Bag Levy[Online].2003 Available from: World Wide Web http://www.jutexpo.co.uk/plasticlevy.html [Accessed: 8 March 2006] Mainewatch Institute. No Date. Economic Policy and Taxation. [Online]. Available from: World Wide Web http://www.mainewatch.org/tax-shifting-frame.html [Accessed: 20 February 2006] National Round Table On The Environment and The Economy. 2002. Toward a Canadian Agenda For Ecological Fiscal Reform: First Steps . [Online] Available from: World Wide Web http://www.nrtee-trnee.ca/Publications/PDF/Report_EFR-First-Steps_E.pdf [Accessed: 7 March 2006] Nordic Council of Ministers, Copenhagen. 2002. The Use of Economic Instrument in Nordic Environment Policy 1999-2001. [Online] Available from: World Wide Web http://www.norden.org/miljoe/Miljo-okonomi/rapporter/sk/581__004.pdf [Accessed: 20 February 2006] Stephan Barg, Anantha Duraiappah and Sarah Van Exan. 2000. International Institute for Sustainable Development. Economic Instruments For Environmental Policy Making in Ontario [Online] 1 December 2000. Available from: World Wide Web: http://www.ene.gov.on.ca/envision/ergreport/downloads/report_paper2.pdf [Accessed: 2 March 2006] U.S Environmental Protect Agency. 1999. Sweden's Nitrogen Oxide Charge. [Online].6 July 1999. Available from: World Wide Web: http://yosemite.epa.gov/ee/epalib/incent.nsf/c7950cb0634d42808525634e00438a4a/6d7c196c44e7c5ab852564f600718ba5?OpenDocument [Accessed: 2 March 2006] The Department of Environment Heritage & Local Government. 2004. Plastic Bags [Online]. Available from: World Wide Web http://www.environ.ie/DOEI/DOEIPol.nsf/wvNavView/Plastic+Bags?OpenDocument&Lang= [Accessed: 6 March 2006] Zero Waste New Zealand Trust. 2002. Plastic Shopping Bag Report [Online]. Available from: World Wide Web http://www.zerowaste.co.nz/assets/Reports/PlasticShoppingBagsandbiodegradablepackaging.pdf [Accessed: 28 February 2006] Bibliography Alan Keyes. 2001. Bush's Road to An Energy Tax. [Online]. Available from: World Wide Web: http://www.sepp.org/NewSEPP/road_to_an_energy_tax.htm [Accessed: 16 February 2006] Alberto Majocchi and Marco Lia. 2002. Environmental Taxes And Border Tax Adjustments An Economic Assessment. [Online]. Available from: World Wide Web: http://www.unipv.it/websiep/wp/127.pdf [Accessed: 20 February 2006] Bernie Fischlowitz-Roberts. 2002. Restructuring Taxes To Protect the Environment. [Online]. Available from: World Wide Web: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update14.htm [Accessed: 2 March 2006] Britt Groosman, 1998. Pollution Tax. [Online]. Available from: World Wide Web http://encyclo.findlaw.com/2500book.pdf [Accessed: 20 February 2006] Carlton N. Owen. 2003.Key Learning. Who Will Own The Forest? A conference Sponsored By World Forestry Center [Online]. Available from: World Wide Web http://www.sfasu.edu/forestry/services/proceedings/carlton_owen_key_learnings.pdf [Accessed: 20 February 2006] Carla Carnaghan & Kenneth J. Klassen. 2003.Univeristy Of Waterloo. E-Commerce and International Tax Planning. [Online]. Available from: World Wide Web http://www.business.uiuc.edu/accountancy/events/symposium/tax/2003/Klassen.pdf [Accessed: 20 February 2006] Charles L. Ballard, John H Goddeeris and Sang-Kyum Kim.2004. ...read more.

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