Environmental Taxes And WTO Rules

In recent years, with the conflict intensifying between trade and environment, the environmental tragedies happened unceasingly. Human beings have been urged to find measures to harmonize trade and environment as soon as possible. Compared with Directly Control Method, Environmental Subsidies, environmental taxes can yet be regarded as one kind of effective measures, which have been proven by theory and practice . The system has realized the internalization of environmental cost, promoting people to change traditional behavior to the environment-protected way. The thesis analyzes a series of disputable problems under the framework of WTO and some suggestions for the environmental taxes. The article is divided into three chapters:Chapter One: Basic Theory of Environmental TaxesEnvironmental taxes refer to collecting taxes from units and individuals according to the degree of exploiting, making use of, contaminating, destroying and protecting environmental resources. The core question of environmental taxes is to seek coordination between protecting the environment and not hindering trade under WTO.As a kind of tax, environmental taxes have the general characteristics of taxes, which are obligatory, free and fixed. Meanwhile, environmental taxes have several special characteristics:Firstly, compared with Directly Control Method, environmental taxes give polluters more freedom to develop trade and business, provided they undertake the taxes as the corresponding pollution which they bring. Environmental taxes try to change people's behavior to realize environment-protection. Directly Control Method is more rigid while environmental taxes become more flexible. Secondly, compared with Environmental Subsidies, environmental taxes are more valid in practice. More small companies are provided subsidies to improve environment, which causes the phenomenon that more enterprises depend on the subsides and lack pressure to protect environment. Therefore, environmental taxes have the characteristics of authority and flexibility.The origins of environmental taxes are Internalization of Environmental Cost and Polluter Pays Principle. By collecting tax to the persons who contaminate the environment to compensate the environmental loss from others or society and the polluters have to add the environmental taxes to the final cost of product, having realized the internalization of environmental cost and belongingness of environmental responsibility.Chapter Two: Analysis for Environmental Taxes Problems under the framework of WTO.Environmental taxes are mainly from the general exception clause GATT XX(b)(g), based on the environment-protected goal, the countries are authorized to levy any tax expense but cannot violate the National Treatment, which is the premise of implementation of environmental taxes. At the same time, the article rethinks the implication of"to protect animal or plant life or health"and implicates that human beings should protect the animals and plants which are beneficial for the mankind. Then,"Necessary"means that there are no replaceable measures. By implicating two conceptions above, the thesis aims to eliminate the barrier for implementation of environmental taxes.The best way of collecting environmental taxes under the framework of WTO is Border Tax Adjustment for Environmental Taxes. Border Tax Adjustment (BTA) refers that export countries exempt the whole or part of taxes to the exportation, which are similar to the domestic products. Meanwhile, the import countries are authorized to collect taxes from the importation as the similar domestic products in the import countries according to the destination. The scope of BTA are the final product, physical inputs to form the final product ,the physical inputs to produce final product but have been consumed in the process of production. The scope of environmental taxes include some factors above, which are consistent with the principles of BTA. Therefore, it is feasible to put the BTA into the system of environmental taxes to realize Border Tax Adjustment for Environmental Taxes , which is the best way to levy environmental taxes under the framework of WTO.By introducing the WTO CASE"Superfund Tax", the scope of BTA has been implicated explicitly and the physical inputs , which are used to form the final product , can be collected Border Tax Adjustment for Environmental Taxes. The thesis expounds the several problems about Border Tax Adjustment for Environmental Taxes. Finally, as the question that whether the Process and Production Methods (PPMs) can be levied environmental taxes, the paper expounds some implementation measures.Chapter Three: Suggestions for Environmental Taxes under framework of WTOIt is necessary to harmonize"A Centre, Three Relationships"to improve and perfect the environmental taxes under the framework of WTO."A centre"ought to coordinate protecting environment and not hindering the trade."Three Relationships"is to harmonize three relationships respectively.The first section implicates the coordination between environmental taxes and Most-Favored-Nation Treatment Principle, National Treatment Principle, Subsidies and Countervailing Rules. First, we must establish explicit tax system, which is not discriminative and does not create the barrier to the trade; Next, we need add some clauses about the situations when the environmental taxes constitute subsidy in"Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures".The second section analyzes the coordination between environmental taxes and international competitiveness. As some viewpoints stated that , the producers who live in the country that collecting the environmental taxes, have to pay more production cost than the other producers who have not been levied environmental taxes .The result reveals that the latter producers have the superiority in commercial competition ,which has caused the coordination of environmental taxes and international competitiveness. To solve the problems, we need to strengthen international cooperation and establish the unified environmental taxes standard. Moreover, we'd better avoid double taxation and use the environmental taxes to protect environment but not hinder the trade.The third section is mainly about coordination of environmental taxes and other environmental measures. We should make use of environmental taxes, Directly Control Method, Environmental Subsidy and Pollution Rights Transaction together to realize the coordination between neutral taxation and non-neutral taxation.In the final analysis, the paper attempts to study the legal regulations and disputable problems under framework of WTO and proposes the best soluble scheme—Border Tax Adjustment for Environmental Taxes. By arranging the existing legal system and analyzing current theoretic disputes, such as whether BTA and the goal of environmental taxes are accordant, the dispute of adjustable scope, whether Process and Production Methods (PPMs) may be suitable to the BTA and so on, we are looking forward to solving such problems and proposing some feasible suggestions to the environmental taxes under the framework of WTO in the order of proposing, analyzing ,solving questions.