CIOT: Comment on green tax proposals in Budget
The Chancellor today repeated the Government’s commitment that green taxes will increase as a proportion of total tax revenues.
Commenting on the environmental taxation proposals in the Budget, Mark Delaney, chair of the Chartered Institute of Taxation Environmental Taxes Working Group, said:
“Green taxes can play a significant role in a modern tax system, but it is important that they are implemented with close attention to sound principles to ensure they are effective in achieving their objectives. Taxes which merely shift pollution elsewhere, or which leave loopholes which can be exploited, or which fail to lead to greener behaviour because of a lack of alternatives, are failing to do their job.
“People should be able to avoid environmental taxes – by changing to ‘greener’ behaviour – but not evade them.
“To be fully effective, it is important that government gives people confidence that environmental tax incentives will be in place for a long period. This is key to changing people’s behaviour. That is why the CIOT is calling on the Government to put in place an Environmental Tax Framework for the rest of the Parliament along the lines of the Business Tax Framework already adopted.”
The CIOT is calling for green taxes to be judged by the following criteria:
1. Fairness
2. Certainty
3. Convenience
4. Minimising the compliance burden
Notes for editors
1. Green measures in the Budget include a carbon price floor, extension of Climate Change Agreements to 2023 and an increase in the climate change levy.
2. The Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) is a charity and the leading professional body in the United Kingdom concerned solely with taxation. The CIOT’s primary purpose is to promote education and study of the administration and practice of taxation. One of the key aims is to achieve a better, more efficient, tax system for all affected by it – taxpayers, advisers and the authorities
The CIOT’s comments and recommendations on tax issues are made solely in order to achieve its primary purpose: it is politically neutral in its work. The CIOT will seek to draw on its members’ experience in private practice, government, commerce and industry and academia to argue and explain how public policy objectives (to the extent that these are clearly stated or can be discerned) can most effectively be achieved.
The CIOT’s more than 15,000 members have the practising title of ‘Chartered Tax Adviser’ and the designatory letters ‘CTA’.
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George Crozier
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