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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday May 19 2015, @06:01PM   Printer-friendly
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."

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @03:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @03:02AM (#185281)

    > The percentage of tax money that actually goes to infrastructure is statistically insignificant.

    Only if you cherry-pick the most narrow possible definition of infrastructure.