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from the extant-dinosaurs-dealing-in-dead-dinosaurs dept.
Common Dreams reports
Governments are failing to properly tax fossil fuel consumption, with enormous environmental costs, the IMF reports.
The fossil fuel industry receives $5.3 trillion a year in government subsidies, despite its disastrous toll on the environment, human health, and other global inequality issues, a new report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published [May 18] has found.
That means that governments worldwide are spending $10 million every minute to fund energy companies--more than the estimated public health spending for the entire globe, IMF economists Benedict Clements and Vitor Gaspar wrote in a blog post accompanying the report (pdf).
[...]Subsidies occur in two ways, IMF Fiscal Affairs Department directors Sanjeev Gupta and Michael Keen explained in a separate blog post published [May 18]:"[Pre-tax]" subsidies--which occur when people and businesses pay less than it costs to supply the energy--are smaller than a few years back. But "post-tax" subsidies--which add to pre-tax subsidies an amount that reflects the environmental, health and other damage that energy use causes and the benefit from favorable VAT or sales tax treatment--remain extremely high, and indeed are now well above our previous estimates.
[...]If anything, the report's findings are "conservative", Steve Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, told Common Dreams. "[It] doesn't include direct subsidies to fossil fuel producers, and it doesn't include things like the cost of military resources to defend Persian Gulf oil."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday May 19 2015, @10:09PM
The difference between extortion and involuntary taxation is
liberty, freedom, democracy. You see, you agreed to be taxed when you agreed to abide by the decisions of the legislature and courts of your unfortunate nation. ("God pity the nation that has libertarians", I think the saying goes.) Now just because you might happen to disagree with the majority decision on such policy, that does not mean you are being forced to pay taxes. You have a choice! Pay your fair share, as determined by said political process; change the policy by convincing enough of your fellow citizens to do so; or leave. I hear that the libertarian paradise of Somalia is wonderful this time of year!
But the other equivocation here is that not taxing is not the same as subsidy. Of course it is. If a tax is a fair policy, it will be fairly applied. Now this does not mean something as moronic, or Steve Forbesian, as a flat tax, but it does mean that were some citizens have a lessened tax liability, that must be compensated by some other social good. In other words, they are being subsidized by paying less in taxes because we as a society think that that money is better utilized by the subsidized entity. Religion is subsidized in many nations. Charity, education, medicine, and so on. And the petroleum industry. Any business should pay the same tax as any other, unless there is some good reason to diverge from equality. So what was (I am assuming there was one at some point) the social good provided to the nation by the oil business that justified the subsidy?