Environmental Tax System Research Articles

Environmental taxes promote the synergy between pollution and carbon reduction: Provincial evidence from China

Since its implementation in 2018, China's environmental tax has become a crucial mechanism in the nation's strategy for reducing environmental pollution. However, its synergistic effect between pollution and carbon reduction has not been adequately focused on and evaluated. This study employs the difference-in-differences (DID) model to analyze the impact of the environmental tax policy on the emissions of pollutant and CO2 as well as the synergistic effect between them. The baseline results reveal that the implementation of environmental taxes significantly reduces the emissions of SO2 and CO2 and enhances the level of synergistic effects. This finding passed a series of robustness tests. Additional analysis reveals that the environmental tax promotes reductions in SO2 and CO2 emissions through adjustments in industrial and energy consumption structures. Furthermore, mechanism analysis from an econometric perspective provides theoretical support for the synergistic effect of pollution reduction and carbon mitigation. In the process of achieving CO2 reduction, SO2 plays a crucial mediating role. The heterogeneity effect suggests that in non-coastal areas and regions with larger governmental scales, the environmental tax exhibits significant emission reduction effects. It is advisable to strengthen the legal safeguard of environmental tax, dynamically adjust tax rates, and timely expand the tax scope to improve the environmental tax system and enhance its policy effects. This study provides empirical evidence and policy insights to optimize the environmental tax, offering valuable references for environmental tax reforms in developing countries.

Characteristics of Russian and Mexican environmental taxation systems

This note examines Russia’s current environmental taxation system by comparing it to that of Mexico. In recent years, the process of ‘greening’ Russia’s taxation system has made good progress but it still has a long way to go before it achieves the level of developed countries, the latter operating a whole set of dedicated taxes designed to stimulate sustainable economic growth and generate wealth with zero environmental impact. Russia’s efforts towards a modernized environmental taxation have unfolded by optimizing the existing taxes, fees and non-tax payments, establishing the pollution quotas, and regulating greenhouse gas emissions. In this study, we explore the feasibility of applying Mexican environmental taxation practices in Russia.

Research on the Impact of Environmental Protection Tax on Green Technology Innovation of Enterprises

Research on the Impact of Environmental Protection Tax on Green Technology Innovation of Enterprises

Environmental taxes, technological innovation and firm performance: Evidence from China's manufacturing firms

Based on panel data from 2011 to 2019 for heavily polluting listed firms in the manufacturing industry, this paper examines the impact of environmental taxes on technological innovation and firm performance using the propensity score matching (PSM) and differences-in-differences (DID) methods. The empirical results show the following: (i) Firm performance and innovation quantity are positively affected by environmental taxes. The average effects of environmental taxes on firm performance and innovation quantity are 1.28 and 0.219, respectively. However, environmental taxes have no significant impact on innovation quality. (ii) A mechanism analysis reveals that innovation quantity plays a significant partial mediating role in the positive effect of environmental taxes on firm performance. (iii) Heterogeneity analysis shows that different environmental tax rates lead to a variation in innovation quantity and firm performance across regions. The positive effect of environmental taxes on innovation quantity is only confirmed in high-tax and low-tax areas. Meanwhile, high environmental taxes are related to better firm performance. Based on the research, policy recommendations are put forward to optimise environmental taxes, such as improving the environmental tax system and coordinating environmental tax and innovation policies.

Environmental fees, local competition, and corporate green innovation activities: evidence from China

ABSTRACT The authority has moved away from using GDP as the sole measure of local government performance, placing new emphasis on environmental governance, tax administration, and technological innovation. This shift has spurred competition among local governments, prompting the need to examine the relationship between government competitive behaviour and firms’ green innovation. The study uses panel data from 2007 to 2020 and presents a comprehensive research-based explanation of how local government competition affects firms’ green innovation activities under China’s fixed and floating environmental tax and fee systems, applying the causal forest algorithm. The results show that local government competition suppresses green innovation under the floating system, but stimulates it under the fixed system. Further analysis shows that the floating system’s relatively higher national environmental governance tax and the increased competition under the floating system increase firms’ operating costs, leading to a ‘crowding out effect’ on green innovation. Conversely, under the fixed system, increased competition among local governments reduces operating costs, promotes investment in green innovation, and creates a ‘leverage effect’.

Can environmental protection tax force enterprises to improve green technology innovation?

The introduction of an environmental protection tax enables a smooth shift from the sewerage charge system to the environmental protection tax scheme. This, in turn, promotes a more sustainable development of enterprise growth, emphasizing eco-friendliness. This is of immense importance in advancing environmentally aware practices and sustainability. Based on data collected from A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2014 to 2021, this paper investigates the influence of environmental protection taxes on the advancement of green technology and the underlying mechanisms. Taking the execution of the Environmental Protection Tax Law in 2018 as a quasi-natural experiment, a double-difference model is employed to examine the causal relationship between environmental protection taxes and the adoption of green technology by companies. The findings indicate that the introduction of an environmental tax could markedly enhance the extent of green technological innovation within corporations. The evidence arising from the testing mechanism implies that such a tax can encourage firms to boost their investments in research and development, upgrade their innovative human capital, and mitigate financing limitations. The study found that there is heterogeneity in the promotion effect of the environmental protection tax on the green technological innovation of businesses in different regions and provinces with varying tax burdens and types of equity capital. Further research shows that the environmental protection tax has a greater impact on the promotion of utility model patent applications for green technology innovation. This paper presents empirical evidence to support further enhancement of the environmental protection tax system. It recommends designing the environmental protection tax policy with consideration for enterprises and local conditions and bolstering the system's capacity for guiding and stimulating enterprises' green development.

Improving the environmental taxation system

Improving the environmental taxation system

Экологические налоги в РФ: трансформация в контексте ESG-повестки

The article is devoted to the study of the transformation of the tax system in Russia under the influence of new realities in connection with environmental problems, the ESG agenda and trends in sustainable development. The article presents the concept, types and functions of “environmental taxation”, which determine its important role in the modern world. The article analyzes the state of the environmental taxation system in Russia, and also estimates budget revenues from environmental taxes and fees and expenses for large-scale environmental initiatives in Russia according to the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation. Based on the research conducted, and also based on the peculiarities of Russian environmental taxation, the article proposes solutions for the development of the field of environmental taxation in the Russian Federation over the next few years.

Synergizing green energy, natural resources, global integration, and environmental taxation: Pioneering a sustainable development goal framework for carbon neutrality targets

Addressing the intricate associations between green energy consumption, natural resources, economic globalization, and environmental taxes is central focus of Europe's ecological sustainability. This study uses cutting-edge techniques to investigate the impacts of green energy consumption, economic globalization, environmental taxation, as well as the potential moderating effects of natural resource rent in conjunction with environmental taxation in European countries during 1995–2020. The empirical findings of this study show that green energy, environmental tax and globalization are negatively associated with ecological footprint, while natural resource is positively linkedwith ecological footprint. Green energy consumption in conjunction with environmental tax has a significant and negative moderating impact on ecological footprint. Similar findings were observedfor the concurrence between natural resources rent and environmental tax, which means that environmental tax has some ability to improve the natural resources management and consequently contribute to improve environmental quality. The establishment of environmental taxation schemes and the use of green energy enable the pursuit of environmentally conscious economic, and energy policies by better-aligning industries with sustainable practices and promoting a balance between economic growth and environmental stewardship. Environmental tax system should support a larger adoption of green energy into European countries for reaching the target of carbon neutrality until 2050. It also contributes to the worldwide effort to achieve carbon neutrality and a sustainable future by offering useful insights and concrete recommendations for the development and implementation of environmentally responsible economic and energy strategies.

Does environmental protection tax improve green total factor productivity? Experimental evidence from China.

Enhancing green total factor productivity (GTFP) is essential for achieving the objective of green development, and the effect of environmental protection tax (EPT), a crucial instrument for addressing environmental challenges, on green TFP is crucial. Based on provincial panel data from 2004 to 2020 in China, this study uses inter-provincial differences in environmental protection tax rates as a quasi-natural experiment and utilizes a synthetic control method to assess the impact of the "changing sewage charge to tax" on regional GTFP. The empirical results suggest that EPT can help enhance GTFP, a finding that still holds after regional placebo tests, time placebo tests, and difference-in-differences robustness tests. The mechanism test demonstrates that EPT influences GTFP via the industrial structure impact and the green technological innovation effect. According to heterogeneity research, regions with a high level of marketization and financial growth are more significantly affected by environmental protection tax policy. This paper offers crucial empirical data for assessing the efficacy of environmental protection tax policy and enhancing the environmental tax system.

The Influence of Environmental Protection Tax Law on Urban Land Green Use Efficiency in China: The Nonlinear Moderating Effect of Tax Rate Increase

Due to the basic carrier function of land, the economic and ecological effects of Environmental Protection Tax Law (EPTL) will be reflected in the land use. Therefore, this article investigates the effect of EPTL on land green use efficiency (LGUE). To be specific, based on the panel data of 278 prefecture-level cities in China from 2012 to 2020, LGUE is evaluated through a global super efficiency epsilon-based measure (EBM) with unexpected output. Then, the reform of “sewage fee-to-tax” is regarded as a natural experiment to accurately evaluate the effect of EPTL on LGUE. The result that the implementation of EPTL significantly drives LGUE is confirmed. The mechanism tests show that the implementation of EPTL enhances the intensity of green innovation, promotes the optimization of industrial structure, and thereby improves LGUE. Moreover, we find that the moderating effect of tax rate increase is nonlinear and exhibits an inverted U-shape. That is, below a certain value, the tax rate increase will strengthen the EPTL’s ability to improve LGUE. However, after exceeding the value, the tax rate increase will weaken the EPTL’s ability to improve LGUE. Targeted suggestions are proposed for improving the environmental protection tax system and LGUE.

Do pro-environmental interventions matter in restoring environmental sustainability? Unveiling the role of environmental tax, green innovation and air transport in G-7 nations

Attaining sustainability has become one of the central goals, and environmental sustainability has received wider attention from policymakers due to its apparent significance. To attain environmental sustainability, developed nations have adopted various pro-environmental interventions, aiming to curb emissions intensities across all sectors directly or indirectly entangled with the environment. In this milieu, the air transportation sector, which is believed to exert a perilous impression on environmental integrity, has received scant attention from scholars. Moreover, the scholarship on the emissions-mediating role of environmental innovation in the air transportation sector is still very nascent. Given that the transportation sector, specifically air transport, plays a crucial role in making commuting easy, the curtailment of the emissions intensities in this sector could have an astounding positive impression on environmental sustainability. Adopting eco-friendly innovations can be a potent way to attain green transportation in the air transportation sector. Thus, the present study investigates the impact of air transportation, globalization, environmental tax, and green innovation on the ecological footprint in the G7 countries from 1994 to 2020 using the novel MMQR approach. Findings reveal that environmental tax, green innovation, and globalization play a key role in mitigating environmental pollution while air transportation accelerates emissions. Furthermore, the interaction of air transportation and green innovation was found to significantly mitigate environmental contamination, thereby proving an effective way to decarbonize the air transportation sector in the G7 countries. The findings suggest the need to invest extensively in eco-friendly technologies, especially in the air transportation sector, support globalization, and consolidate the existing environmental tax system to meet the ecological sustainability target.

Analysis of Research Trends and Progress on the Impact of Environmental Protection Tax on Listed Companies in China

The implementation of environmental protection tax increases the protection of the environment at the legal level, but also increases the input of enterprises and affects the final output of enterprises. If enterprises cannot make timely adjustments to reduce operating costs and improve operational efficiency, it will lead to longer turnaround time in the market, which in turn will lead to a broken capital chain or even bankruptcy. Therefore, based on the current stage of research on the impact of environmental protection tax on enterprises, the results of this paper show that (1) domestic research on environmental tax has entered a plateau in research from focusing on the basic theory of environmental tax and foreign experience in environmental tax collection to constructing China's environmental tax system and then exploring the collection and management of environmental tax and its effects. (2) Some scholars believe that scientific and suitable environmental regulations can appropriately stimulate enterprises to innovate and make their operational capacity and profitability improve, which in turn can offset or even exceed the negative effects brought by environmental regulations. (3) Some scholars believe that the imposition of environmental protection tax will increase the cost of products and operating costs of enterprises, which will inhibit the efficiency of enterprises and have a negative impact on the operation and future development of enterprises.

Study on the Impact of Environmental Tax on Corporate Green Innovation under the Dual Carbon Target based on A-Share Mining Listed Companies

Will the collection of environmental protection tax promote the green innovation of enterprises? Under the call of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China to increase pollution prevention and ecological protection, this paper is based on Porter's hypothesis, taking China's Shanghai and Shenzhen A -share industrial listed companies from 2010 to 2020 as the research object, and empirically tested the impact of environmental protection tax on corporate green innovation. The research finds that: environmental protection tax significantly promotes green innovation of enterprises, and presents a hysteresis feature, that is, the current environmental tax significantly improves the level of green innovation of enterprises in the next period and the next period. After analysis, it is found that the role of environmental tax in promoting green innovation of enterprises is mainly reflected in state-owned enterprises, large-scale enterprises, and enterprises with low financing constraints. The research conclusions theoretically enrich the literature on the research on the economic consequences of environmental taxes and the research on the influencing factors of corporate green innovation, and provide important inspiration for improving China's environmental tax system and improving corporate green innovation in practice.

Air Pollution, Environmental Protection Tax and Well-Being.

The effective control of air pollution to advance human health and improve well-being has risen to the forefront of discussion in recent years. Based on China's 2019 environmental protection tax data and China Social Survey (CSS) data, this paper studies the effects of subjective air pollution and the environmental protection tax on residents' well-being using an econometric mediation effect model. The research conclusions are as follows: (1) Subjective air pollution can significantly reduce residents' well-being, (2) an environmental protection tax can significantly improve residents' well-being and it can eliminate some of the negative influence of subjective air pollution on residents' well-being, and (3) the grouping test of residents' income, regional distribution, urban and rural structure, age structure, gender structure, and other variables shows that the effects of subjective air pollution on residents' well-being are heterogeneous among different populations. After further endogeneity testing with the instrumental variables method, adjusting the primary variables, and altering the research procedures, the results are still robust. Based on these findings, we should vigorously promote the development of ecological civilization and good air quality and support reforming the environmental protection tax system to enhance well-being. It is also necessary to shift from a crude development model to a green industry and business model. While emphasizing social equity and production efficiency, we should ensure the synchronous development of cities and villages. Additionally, tangible steps should be implemented to raise people's incomes, expand young people's work options, and enhance their satisfaction. The article focuses on the impact of subjective air pollution on residents' well-being, adding air pollution to the factors affecting well-being. Furthermore, the article finds that the environmental protection tax has two advantages: it can govern air pollution and promote green development, and, at the same time, it can enhance social harmony and improve residents' well-being.

Environmental Protection Fee-to-Tax and Corporate Environmental Social Responsibility: A Test Based on Corporate Life Cycle Theory

Corporate environmental social responsibility enhancement is an important way to promote green and low-carbon economic transformation and achieve high-quality development. As an important reform of China’s environmental taxation system, environmental protection fees and taxes play a unique role in environmental governance. However, faced with the increase in the intensity of environmental regulations after the implementation of the environmental protection fee-to-tax, will firms take the initiative to assume environmental social responsibility (ESR)? This paper uses the implementation of China’s Environmental Protection Tax Law in 2018 as a quasi-natural experiment to study the impact of environmental protection fee-to-tax policy on corporate ESR from a life-cycle perspective. We find that, overall, the environmental protection fee-to-tax reform policy significantly increases the likelihood of corporate ESR by 66%. By the life cycle stage, the effect of environmental protection fee-to-tax policy is mainly reflected in maturity and decline stage firms, and the impact on growth stage firms is not obvious. The design of the current environmental protection tax system and the differences in financial status, business strategies, and environmental management levels of firms in different life cycle stages are important factors in this phenomenon. Further sub-sample regressions show that the environmental protection fee-to-tax policy significantly increases the ESR among state-owned, key regulated and higher financing-constrained firms, especially those in the maturity and decline periods. The findings of this paper enrich corporate life cycle theory and provide a reference for decision making to further improve environmental tax policies to stimulate a firm’s green and low-carbon transformation.

Optimization of the environmental protection tax system design based on artificial intelligence

Introduction: China achieved significant economic growth in the past two decades, and the sustained economic growth also brings negative implications for the environment. The Chinese government has introduced various fiscal reforms to mitigate the negative implication of the environment in the economy. Modernization of China's governance system and improvement of social development were the main goals of the 14th Five-Year Plan.Methods: Literature combing method and Chart analysis method.Result: Artificial intelligence promotes the efficiency of bonded governance environment and boosts national management modernization.Discussion: This paper suggests that the artificial intelligence construction of the environmental protection tax system improves tax collection and management, tax payment service, and tax management. In addition, the government should adopt other strategies to promote a clean environment, such as tax exemption for green and cleaner production. Easy loans should be provided to the exports, especially those contributing to clean energy production.

ПРОБЛЕМИ ТА ПЕРСПЕКТИВИ ЕКОЛОГІЧНОГО ОПОДАТКУВАННЯ В УКРАЇНІ

The article substantiates the importance of environmental tax as an effective tool in the field of environmental protection. The purpose of the article is to identify the key role and importance of environmental taxation in solving the problems of excessive load on the environment, to highlight the main problems and issues that slow down the positive effect of the implementation of its mechanisms, to analyze theregulatory documents in this feild. It is determined that depending on how rapidly the country is developing, the implementation of one of the functions (environmental protection, incentive and fiscal) will prevail during the implementation of reforms in the field of environmental taxation. The great role and importance of environmental taxation at all levels of socio-economic development of the country is defined: budget filling, financing of environmental protection measures, motivation for innovative activities, for the introduction of resource-saving technologies and the environmental management system, increasing the competitiveness of regions, reducing the level of anthropogenic load on the environment. The main provisions of the normative and legal documents for the regulation of environmental taxation in Ukraine are systematized, the demotivational direction of action of its individual components is determined, which leads to decrease in the incentives of business entities to reduce the man-made loadon the environment. Attention is focused on the imperfections of the information provision of research, and the creation of unified information databases is proposed. The need to direct the results of scientific research into the feild of their practical implementation has been proven. It is proposed to abandon the symptomatic implementation of environmental taxation tools in favor of deep reform of the environmental taxation system.

The optimal choice of environmental tax revenue usage: Incentives for cleaner production or end-of-pipe treatment?

The environmental tax system is effective in pollution abatement. However, levying an environmental tax may be detrimental to economic growth. Reasonable use of environmental tax revenue may achieve both environmental protection and economic growth. This study proposes to earmark environmental tax revenue for pollution treatment. Taking fiscal expenditure theory into consideration, environmental tax revenue usage is divided into transfer expenditure and purchase expenditure. An environmental computable general equilibrium (CGE) model is established to evaluate the effects of environmental tax revenue usage. The optimal choice is to increase the environmental tax rate and simultaneously use tax revenue for cleaner production subsidies and end-of-pipe treatment expenditures. Under the optimal scenario, pollutant retention decreases by 21.45%, and GDP increases by 0.006%. For most regions in China, it is better to raise the environmental tax rate to the middle level of a specified range. Moreover, the government should distribute environmental tax revenue evenly across the expenditure of different environmental protection projects.

Did the pollution charge system promote or inhibit innovation? Evidence from Chinese micro-enterprises

Studying the impact of the former Pollution Charge System (PCS) on enterprise innovation will provide a reference for China to improving the current environmental protection tax system (EPTS). Based on innovation panel data and the sewage charges applied to polluting enterprises in China, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of the PCS on enterprise innovation. The results show that the PCS significantly inhibits the patent output of enterprises. The study analyzes heterogeneity in these findings in three respects: enterprise scale, enterprise ownership, and regional development level. The results are as follows: 1) The PCS has a greater inhibitory effect on smaller enterprises' innovation than on larger enterprises; 2) The inhibitory effect on non-state-owned enterprises' innovation is greater than on state-owned enterprises; 3) The inhibitory effect is greater for enterprises located in western regions of China. We also use a difference-in-differences strategy to address endogeneity concerns. The mediation analysis finds that the mechanism of the PCS affecting innovation is to reduce enterprise cash flow and R&D expenditure.