Ecological Deficit Tax: A Theoretical and Empirical Research Framework

Abstract

Based on price system determined by ecological footprint analysis and ecological service value theory, this paper calculates ecological deficits and their value, proposes environmental tax plan of value compensation, constructs green social accounting matrix and environmental tax CGE model by regarding ecological occupation as an input factor, and analyzes the environmental, employment, growth, distribution and trade effects of tax plan under 5%, 10% and 30% of compensation intensity through comparative analysis of numerical simulation. It comes to the results as follows:firstly, the ecological deficit tax plan has a double dividend effect on the reduction in ecological occupation and employment growth; secondly, the total output and intermediate inputs decline as a whole; the nominal GDP increases and the green GDP grows faster, but the real GDP declines, indicating that tax policies can result in the rise in price indexes to a certain extent; thirdly, owing to higher-level ecological deficit compensation, government tax revenues improve greatly, and their growth rate is higher than the growth rates of labor and capital factors, but the proportions of income of residents and corporate revenues decline slightly. Based on the proportions of resources related tax and environmental tax in total tax revenues, as well as the tax structures and changing trends of OECD nations, this paper finally suggests that compensatory rate of the ecological deficit tax should be lower than 5%.