Taxation of energy

Joint Committee on Taxation, U.S. Congress Taxation of Energy (wth Mark Mazur)... 

Directive 2003/96/EG on restructuring of the common framework for taxation of energy products and electricity. Sweden has a long history of taxing energy and CO2 emissions. The EU Directive is not likely to change the Swedish emissions, since the minimum taxation rates are already satisfied. 

Other Directives seem to have played a relevant role in the elaboration of the NAP, although no specific details on how they affected allocation are provided, such as the Directive 2001/81/EC, which sets national emissions ceilings for several atmospheric pollutants (SO2, NOx, VOC and NH3), and the Directive 2003/96/EC on the restructuring of the EC framework for the taxation of energy products and electricity. 

To provide a sense of the value of some of these deviations from neutral taxation. Table 2 reports cumulative estimates over five years of selected energy-related tax expenditures. The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act defines a tax expenditure as a revenue loss attributable to a special inclusion, exemption, or deduction from gross income or a special credit, preferential tax rate, or deferral of tax. 

Heede, H. R. (198.S). A Preliminary Assessment of Federal Energy Subsidies in FYl984. Washington, DC Tesdmony submitted to the Subcommittee on Energy and Agricultural Taxation, Committee on Finance, United States Senate, June 21. 

A financial case will have to take account of capital costs, energy savings, certain other potential operating cost savings, and the cost of finance and taxation. Again the... 

A 2006 Special Issue of the Energy Policy Journal (34(8)) analyses the European experience with eco-taxation and points to deeper underlying issues about the degree of public understanding and trust in political processes. A Swedish survey also underlines that attitudes to carbon taxation are directly related to the degree of trust in politicians, more even than an individual s own exposure to the taxes (Hammar and Jagers, 2006). 

One must generally be careful in using cost estimates from different countries with different taxation and subsidy structures. In particular, one should be concerned over use of current energy costs for estimating break-even costs of new technologies. 

---