Environmental Taxes in the Italian White Paper on Fiscal Reform

Abstract

In recent years a broader utilization of environmental taxes has been included in the political agenda in many European States in an effort to overcome the limits of an environmental policy structurally based on command-and-control measures and also to provide the Treasury with the necessary means to cut other taxes with distortionary effects on the economy, such as income taxes with very high marginal rates or social security contributions, mainly those levied on unskilled or low-skilled workers. This kind of manoeuvre could provide a double benefit to the economy, that is known in the literature as the double dividend.¹