Carbon Tax Proposal

[Ready-4-ER-at-14]

Yahoo finance mentioned that a carbon tax proposal was being made to help balance the budget. The intent of this thread is to assume that eventually something like this will be instituted somewhere even if just locally and will eventually affect all of us.

I realize that this topic could become heated if people chose to but offer it as a way to start changing our lives to be less of a problem and less of a cost in the future. In a way I expect it to be an asset tax in that larger homes, larger autos, and more affluent people would tend to pay more. I would assume that the poorest of the poor at least in the US would have some subsidy to offset at least part of the tax.

I suppose shipping costs will become higher as well as the usual conservation green initiatives would come into play as well.

Anyone else trying to preplan for this?

 

[pb4uski]

... Anyone else trying to preplan for this?

Nope. I don't try to preplan for asteroids either.

 

[MichaelB]

Thread moved to public policy forum.

It appears this is an idea, one of many, and there is no specific proposal under consideration. The absence of details makes it difficult to discuss.

 

[Sunset]

I think carbon taxes are simply an excuse for more taxation.
If more taxes are needed, make the case and raise taxes.

A company that grows sunflowers probably has very low carbon emissions, so sells their credits to a coal burning factory. Taxes are paid on the sale and on the stuff a coal burning factory cannot offset.

The Sunflower company has not changed it's carbon emissions. The coal burning factory has not changed theirs. Everyone considers the carbon tax a success.

Much simpler would be to set limits on various industries for carbon emission and to lower them over time rather than let some polluting company continue to pollute.

 

[Chuckanut]

I would not mind it if the tax was offset dollar for dollar by something like a reduction in the sales tax. But, right now, it would be another tax piled on all the others. If the goal is to reduce carbon emissions, there is no reason to not rebate the tax back to the people by lowering other taxes paid by most of the citizens - the sales tax is a good example since it is paid by nearly all citizens.

 

[braumeister]

The problem with a carbon tax is that they shouldn't call it a tax. Take a cue from the airline, hotel, and telecommunications industries and call it a fee.

 

[SecondAttempt]

... a carbon tax proposal was being made to help balance the budget.

The trouble is, if the carbon tax were being proposed to help reduce greenhouse gases and hence the costs of climate change then we could at least set the tax at an effective rate that is actually related to its purpose. In other words, use an estimate of the impact of burning 1 pound of jet fuel to set the tax for an airplane flight.

When the goal is to patch a budget hole it is hopeless to plan for.