中国独立型环境税方案设计及其效应分析

环境税是当前国家正在推进的一项重要的环境经济政策改革。本研究从分析环境税的内涵和实施基础出发,提出了我国独立型环境税税制设计方案,对污染排放税目、污染产品税目、生态保护税目和碳排放税目的具体税制要素进行了设计,测算了不同组合方案下的环境税可能收入水平。利用环境CGE模型分析了环境税征收对GDP、物价、生产、消费、贸易和要素资源配置的影响,提出了环境税的实施路线图。     

环境税政策改革与我国环保产业发展的探讨

2008年,在我国实行全面节能减排的形势下,开征环境税将会成为政府重点推进的税收政策之一,国家有关部门目前正在研究出台环境税的征收管理办法.环境税政策的改革必将对企业的生产经营活动产生巨大影响,也将使我国税费征收逐渐走向"绿色化".本文对环境税的开征对环保产业发展产生的影响进行了初步探讨.     

开征环境税 为环境监管增合力

开征环境税将成今年政府重点推进的税收政策之一。而在去年11月,财政部科研所的研究报告,已经对环境税提出了三种可选方案:一是一般环境税,二是污染排放税,三是污染产品税。     

期待环境税早日开征

研究了近两年的环境税征收方案,在日前由国务院批复的《关于2009年深化经济体制改革工作的意见》中得到重申：加快理顺环境税费制度,研究开征环境税。5月31日,有关专家对记者表示,目前财政部正在与环保部、国家税务总局共同研究环境税的开征问题,迄今为止还没有拿出最终方案,开征环境税也没有明确的时间表,但一定会“尽快”。     

日本环境税的有关情况及其对我国的启示

环境税也称为绿色税,基本上是指以保护环境为目的的各种税收措施或征收的税则。日本政府近年来大力推进针对碳排放的环境税的实施,取得了一定效果。本文主要考察日本环境税的产生历程以及相关问题,并得出对我国的借鉴意义。     

试论我国环境税制的完善

在商品经济高度发达的今天,环保事业也逐步走向市场。越来越多的国家开始重视运用经济手段来解决环境危机问题,环境税就是其中倍受青睐的一种手段。我国目前虽已意识到环境税的重要性,但环境税仍是极其薄弱的环节。本文试从分析我国环境税的现状着手,参考国外的先进经验,对完善我国环境税制提出几点建议。     

市场机制下开征环境税可行性探讨

本文以适应我国建立社会主义市场经济体制下的形势和解决环境问题途径,对开征环境税的可行性进行了初步探讨。     

两会劲吹环保风

<正>两会召开,环境税成为此次代表委员热议的话题。我们收集了不同层面的声音,以帮助读者了解这个话题。环境税开征条     

资讯

<正>新规环境税试点方案正在制订最近,环境保护部副部长潘岳在出席某环保活动时透露,相关部委正在制订开征环境税方案,环境税的试点方案也正在制订中。     

日本开征环境税

日本政府近日通过2011年度税制改革大纲,决定从2011年10月1日起分阶段开征环境税。2015年以后,预计每年能征收环境税2400亿日元。日本环境省测算,开征环境税将导致汽油、煤油、柴油价格平均每升上涨0．79日元。     

Distributional effects of environmental policies in Greece

Environmental protection policies generate an equity question concerning the fair allocation of environmental benefits and costs. This paper presents evidence from Greece during the 1980s. The findings reveal that Greek environmental policies, in the form of government self-regulatory programs, are mostly regressive in nature. At the regional level these programs combine all forms of vertical equity. Since the public sector finances the majority of related expenditures out of taxes, the regressive elements of environmental policies have been reinforced by discretionary fiscal measures and tax evasion, accompanied by inflation, which have distorted the country's progressive tax system.     

Environmental regulation, productive efficiency and cost of pollution abatement: a case study of the sugar industry in India

In this paper the input distance function is estimated for the Indian Sugar industry under alternative assumptions of weak and strong disposability of bad outputs. The estimated distance function is used to make the estimates of environmental efficiency, Malmquist productivity index and shadow prices of pollutants. The technical efficiency measure estimated under the assumption of weak disposability of bad outputs is utilized to test the Porter hypothesis. Marginal costs of pollution abatement functions are estimated for different pollutants of water. Pollutant specific taxes are computed using the tax-standards method.     

Taxing virgin natural resources: Lessons from aggregates taxation in Europe

The objective of this review paper is to analyze the efficiency of environmentally motivated taxes on virgin raw materials. We analyze both the economic-theoretical foundations of virgin natural resource taxation, and the empirical experiences of aggregates taxes i.e., taxes on, for instance, gravel, rock, stone, etc. in three European countries. These include Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom. The theoretical analysis indicates that taxing natural resource output or use typically represents a ‘second-best’ policy alternative, which can be used when, for instance, the monitoring of non-point source emissions is difficult or efficient property rights regimes cannot be established. The empirical analysis shows that the European aggregate taxes have assisted in reducing virgin resource use in spite of the relatively low own-price responses. However, generators of recycled materials typically have few incentives to enhance their waste sorting activities in the presence of a tax on virgin materials. Unless additional policies to increase the supply of recycled materials are implemented, supply will not increase much even in the presence of high demand. Finally, although second-best taxes are sometimes motivated by the desire to keep administration costs low, they could come at the cost of improper incentives and of limited policy legitimacy.     

The Employment and Productivity Effects of Environmental Taxation: Additional Dividends or Added Distractions?

Claims of employment and productivity gains from environmental taxation are examined in the context of recent policy developments which have extended the traditional role of economic instruments in environmental regulation. Although the general existence of such spin-offs cannot be established, the debate has clarified guidelines for designing and implementing specific environmentally based taxes to help deliver sustainable development. Recent UK tax proposals have started to draw on the flexibility of fiscal instruments to tackle environmental problems. Innovations include earmarking taxes to fund allied spatial and sectoral programmes, recycling revenues to provide fiscally neutral improvements in tax efficiency and using taxation to help promote eco-efficiency.     

浅谈环境物理学

本文论述了物理学与环境污染的关系。物理学的应用带来了环境污染,同时也为环境污染的治理带来了条件。环境物理学的兴起,从声、光、热、振动和空气动力等方面入手,为治理环境带来了广阔的前景。     

The need to integrate values into environmental curricula

Many environmental problems are controversial because of conflicting values people hold and because there is not a consensus as to which values should have precedence over others. If environmental managers are to make ethical decisions that reflect environmental values, they must have full understanding of such values and types of ethics and principles of moral reasoning to use in the decision-making process. Unfortunately, integration of values into environmental curricula has often not been explicit or comprehensive. One result is that university-trained environmental managers do not possess the knowledge, skills, and methods necessary for more ethically based decisions. An analysis of attitudes about integrating values and/or ethics into environmental curricula and approaches to do so yields the conclusion that environmental programs should more fully include teaching about values and ethics so that environmental managers can make more ethically sound decisions.     

Environmental indicators for communication of life cycle impact assessment results and their applications

Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is performed to quantitatively evaluate all environmental impacts from products, systems, processes and services. However, LCIA does not always provide valuable information for choosing among alternatives with different specifications, functionalities and lifetimes. The objectives of this study are (1) to propose environmental indicators to evaluate environmental efficiency and value qualitatively and quantitatively on the basis of analogies to financial and economic indicators, and (2) to present the application of the indicators. Incremental evaluation using a reference is employed to obtain the environmental indicators. The environmental efficiency indicators are conceptually based on the ratios of reduced environmental burdens returned to environmental burdens required: environmental return on investment, environmental payback period and environmental internal rate of return. The environmental value indicator is the sum of all reduced and required environmental burdens: i.e., environmental net present value. All the environmental indicators can be used to compare and rank the environmental efficiencies or values of alternatives. The environmental efficiency indicators can be applied to a new environmental labeling. The concept of eco-efficiency labeling is developed by combining the environmental efficiency indicators with financial indicators. A case study is performed to illustrate the necessity and importance of the environmental indicators. These environmental indicators can help easily communicate LCIA results in the field of environmental management.     

Local air pollution and global climate change taxes: a distributional analysis for the case of Spain

Global climate change measures are difficult to implement. In this context, local air pollution measures may play an important role in the political agenda since their effects are felt more immediately by citizens. Distributional implications are one of the main barriers for implementing environmental policies. This paper explores the distributional implications of air pollution taxes and compares them to climate change taxes. For the comparison, both tax schemes were set to yield the same revenue. Methodologically, the study uses a top–down approach linking a macro model to a micro model. We find that taxes on local air pollutants are more regressive than those levied on CO₂. This is because the goods implicitly taxed have a greater weight in the consumer basket of low-income groups, even if the tax revenues are recycled. Furthermore, the revenue-neutral recycle scheme increases both taxes efficiency, but, at the same time, can increase regressivity.     

Environmental Auditing and the Role of the Accountancy Profession: A Literature Review

This review of the literature on environmental auditing and the potential role of accountants distinguishes between compliance audits and audits of the environmental management system. After an extensive introduction to the concept, this review focuses on the similarities and differences between an environmental audit and a financial statement audit. The general approach to both types of audits is similar, except that environmental audits are largely unregulated. Both audits place an emphasis on the evaluation of control systems, which is an argument in favor of external auditors playing a role in environmental audits. Another argument for including external accountants is their code of ethics. However, these professionals seem to be reluctant to enter the field of environmental auditing. It is argued that this reluctance is because of a lack of generally accepted principles for conducting environmental audits. If external accountants are engaged in environmental auditing, they should be part of multidisciplinary teams that also include scientists and engineers to avoid a too strong focus on procedures. Rather than treating these audits as totally different, it is proposed that there be a move towards integrated, or even universal, audits.     

Evaluation of the california environmental quality act

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has evolved from a mini-NEPA, first enacted in 1970, into a procedural act that affects the approval process of all large developments in California. In 1990, California local governments produced over 1600 environmental impact reports and 30,000 initial studies under CEQA. Because of its widespread use, CEQA has periodically drawn the attention of the state legislature, most recently in 1993, when over 60 CEQA reform bills were introduced. This paper describes the CEQA process and evaluates its success at meeting its explicit and implicit goals. The research includes a statewide survey of CEQA practice, sent to the planning departments of all 513 local governments in California in 1991. Survey respondents agreed that CEQA helps in evaluating environmental impacts, reducing impacts, informing the public, and coordinating public agency review. It is effective in reducing the environmental impacts of individual projects, but is not as effective in improving environmental quality on an areawide scale. This research concludes that CEQA has led to positive outcomes and is not as deeply flawed as many of its critics claim. Still, CEQA as currently designed may not be the optimal vehicle for ensuring environmental quality.