Title: Environmental versus fiscal considerations in taxing energy
Authors: Kalle Maatta
Addresses: PO Box 4, FIN V00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
Abstract: There are good reasons to be cautious about integration optimism with respect to energy taxation, i.e. that environmental and fiscal considerations can support each other. Energy taxes are vulnerable to criticism from an environmental point of view, among other things, energy tax legislation has been amended repeatedly and many tax components are narrow-based, leading to environmental ineffectiveness as well as to cost-ineffectiveness. From a fiscal point of view, one might speak about a double-dividend illusion instead of the double-dividend gain.
Keywords: energy tax; environmental tax; environmental effectiveness; cost-effectiveness; the buoyancy and elasticity of tax proceeds; fiscal flexibility; fiscal illusion.
DOI: 10.1504/IJGEI.1999.000851
International Journal of Global Energy Issues, 1999 Vol.12 No.7/8, pp.319-331
Published online: 24 Jul 2003 *
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