COMPARATIVE ASSESMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL TAXES IN THE EUROPEAN UNION STATES

Abstract

Environmental taxes are tools of economic regulation. The analysis of environmental tax situation shows that most of the elder European Union (ES-15) states have already carried out the tax reform, whereby part of labour and/ or revenue (profit) taxes is shifted to environmental taxes. There are very few research papers which usually analyze separate taxes or the situation in a concrete state, but not in their group. Such research papers do not reflect the whole tax situation and there is no comparative analysis and evaluation. The object of the research is to identify the significance of environmental taxes and tendencies of development and evaluate the influence of environmental tax reform on the shift of tax burden. The period of research is 1999-2012, while some ratios are analyzed for the period of 1995-2012. The analysis of the dynamics and structure of environmental taxes in EU-15 and EU-12 countries shows that environmental taxes account for a similar percentage of GDP in both EU-15 and EU-12 states and their share in tax revenue is significant. The revenue of environmental taxes have an increasing tendency and the growth rate in the EU-15 and EU-12 countries equalized. Different tendencies in the structure of environmental taxes may be observed in EU-15 and EU-12 states. The results of environmental tax reform show that the burden of labour tax load reduces, whereas environmental tax load increases.