To be effective all actors must be facing the same price

The is the virtually unanimous economists recommendation mettre terme à la gratuité de l' usage de l' atmosphère en appliquant un prix à les émissions, en accord avec le principe pollueur-develop terme term free of the use of the atmosphere by applying a price to emissions, in accordance with the principle of polluters - pay. The existence of such a price, unique, transparent, and applying to all issuers, is likely to lead to a rapid reorganization and lower cost of the economic system to bring down emissions over the next decades.

To be effective, all actors must be facing the same price. If some are exempt, they will be no incentive to reduce their emissions despite the low cost of some reduction opportunities, while subject to the tax will be encouraged to do so. However, trim cuts lie ahead that could undermine the environmental effectiveness of the mechanism and its transparency.

Thus, the Government chose to exempt three quarters of energy purchases of farmers and the fishers. Of course, this exemption shall have disappeared within three years from the Government project. But it is clear the risks of sustainability of such concessions. On the regime to motor carriers, each must be fully paid a tax to which he has been subject, the tax being theoretically postponed on the shipper, need explain to stakeholders how is supposed to work the price signal!

At first reading, MEPs still have a little more trimmed the plate out of the perimeter of the tax people with disabilities. The reason is quite understandable: among those suffering from disabilities, people with reduced mobility often do not have access to public transit and can be forced with the use of a particular vehicle. But the chosen method is incorrect. Do not remove this category of citizen to the payment of the fee, but increase the lump sum compensation granted to this component of the population on the basis of national solidarity.

The second condition of success of the carbon tax concerns its evolution in the long term. What is likely to massively change our behaviour by encouraging invest permanently in cutting emissions (insulation, renewable energy...), it is the anticipation that the price of emissions has become a constant in the economic and social life and grow in the future. In this connection, what signal provides the Finance Bill in its current state In truth, no outside a general reference in the recitals and it is a serious weakness of the device submitted for parliamentary discussion.

But parliamentarians vote the principle of price growth, must be that there is a strong consensus within the national representation on the mode of compensation granted to issuers subject to tax. To be environmentally effective, such compensation should never affect the incentives from the tax price signal. Thus, compensation should not depend on future decisions in terms of emissions. And to be acceptable socially, they must be fair to the more fragile economic actors. The special schemes for certain activities (farmers and transporters) and artistic blur around the question of the relationship between the introduction of the carbon tax and business tax relief not augur well.

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