- By raising taxes on pollution and waste we discourage those harmful practices while making cleaner and safer alternatives more competitive.
- The intent is to use basic economic principles to get the market to tell the ecological truth. If done properly, environmental fees can help make markets work better by incorporating more of the indirect costs of goods and services such as pollution clean-up or state healthcare costs into the prices of products or services. The change in prices can change consumer and producer behaviors accordingly.
- Far from hurting economies, environmental fees are just one strategy that may help us achieve a safer and more sustainable economy that is not detrimental to our environment and health.
- Often it is taxpayers who foot the bill for government monitoring and services that relate to waste and pollution. Legislators can improve their budgets and assist market forces to find cheaper alternatives by increasing the fees that polluters pay toward their own oversight and clean-up.
- Any arguments which support government subsidies for polluters as a type of “economic development” tool ignore the overall costs to taxpayers of higher taxes, declining health, and environmental clean-ups. Ending pollution subsidies is a good way to combat all of these effects in a way that makes good fiscal sense.
State Environmental Resource Center
106 East Doty Street, Suite 200 § Madison, Wisconsin 53703
Phone: 608-252-9800 § Fax: 608-252-9828
Email: info@serconline.org
106 East Doty Street, Suite 200 § Madison, Wisconsin 53703
Phone: 608-252-9800 § Fax: 608-252-9828
Email: info@serconline.org