Green Tax Primer / VT Fair Tax Coalition
Green Tax policy is basically to "Tax Bads, Not Goods". In other words, tax activities that harm the environment, and use the revenue to create incentives for activities that help the environment.
Since 1998, VBSR and our Vermont Fair Tax Coalition (VFTC) Partners have been working to promote tax policy reforms that create incentives for environmental protection. This includes:
- environmental tax shifting,
- eliminating subsidies that harm the environment, and
- promoting green economics in Vermont.
Current Action
Recent VFTC activities have included promoting the approach of “common assets". We helped bring Peter Barnes to the Vermont statehouse as part of a three-week global warming series in January 2007. Barnes is the Co-founder of Working Assets and author of Who Owns The Sky? and Capitalism 3.0: A Guide To Reclaiming The Commons.
Past Action
2005
VFTC produced Tax Reform that Agrees with Vermont, which describes how shifting taxes can support activities society wants to discourage, such as those that increase pollution and spur sprawl. The report outlines strategies to encourage:
- energy efficiency and renewable energy,
- clean water, and
- sustainable land use.
You can download the report as a PDF:
Tax Reform that Agrees with Vermont (840k)
2006
In October of 2006, VFTC, in collaboration with the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, brought Dr. Anselm Gorres, Director of Green Budget Germany, to speak at Vermont College and UVM. Green Budget Germany supported the development of the Ecological Tax Reform (ETR) in Germany, and Dr. Gorres made presentations on “Germany’s Ecotax Reform 1999-2003: Implementation, Impact, Future Development.”
