Ekološka poreska reforma-priča o Kolberovom viđenju „umetnosti oporezivanja“
Environmental Tax Reform - The Story of Colbert’s View on “Art of Taxation”

Summary/Abstract: Environmental protection is one of the most current topics in the last decades of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st century, both on local and global level. Various measures for the reduction of environmental degradation have been implemented. Economic instruments have an important role in fulfilling this aim. Among them, tradable permits and taxes have been proven to be very successful. It is necessary to achieve a balance between economic development and exploitation of natural resources to satisfy the needs both of present and future generations-the goal of sustainable development links the protection of the environmental and economic development. This paper analyses the arguments for and against Environmental Tax Reform. Many European countries have introduced a range of environmental tax measures. While the primary object of the measures is to achieve environmental benefits, other factors have influenced the design of the taxes. Recognizing the high rate of unemployment as a major problem in Europe, tax policy officials in many European countries have used environmental taxes in part to shift the tax burden from labor factor to environment factor. This transfer was performed by imposing environmental taxes directly on the sectors responsible for environmentally harmful behavior. One might say that the positive impact of this reform to the employment increase is questionable. It has modest effect on improving employment. In addition, Environmental Tax Reform cannot eliminate regressive effect of environmental taxes and in fact, it leads to the socially unjust environmentally inefficient tax system.

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