Revenues from environmentally related taxes in selected countries

The graph below shows revenues from environmentally related taxes in the OECD countries and in selected other countries. The source of the figures for most Latin American countries not members of the OECD is the publication Revenue Statistics in Latin America, 1990 - 2009. The publication presents relatively aggregated data, and it is possible that some of the countries apply additional environmentally related taxes that couldn't be singled-out in the data available. For Brazil, the source of the information is the publication Carga Tributária no Brasil 2010, issued by the Ministério da Fazenda.

The source of the data for South Africa is database updates from the South African Treasury. Similar database updates, and data from the OECD Revenue Statistics publications, are the sources used for OECD countries.

One can notice that in both Costa Rica and in the Dominican Republic, the revenues from the environmentally related taxes that we have identified is larger, when measured in per cent of GDP, that the Average in OECD member countries. The same is the case in South Africa -- but the tax-bases on which a part of the revenues there has been raised would not generally be defined as 'environmentally related'.

In the graph below, the revenues from environmentally related taxes are split across three categories of tax-bases: Energy products (including motor fuels), motor vehicles, and "other". It is pointed out that the total revenues displayed in South Africa in this graph is lower than what was shown in the preceeding one, as we lack sufficient information to allocate the revenues from a couple of taxes across the tax-base categories.

The graph below shows the same revenues measured in per cent of total tax revenues in the respective countries. As generally the non-OECD countries raise less revenues than OECD countries on other, tax bases, the share of revenues from environmentally related taxes is in some cases quite important -- more than 17% of total tax revenue in the Dominican Republic.

The graph below shows the same revenues measured per capita in the respective countries. The amount of revenues collected, measured in national currencies, was corrected for inflation, using the respective the GDP deflators, and converted to USD, using GDP-based purchasing parity-adjusted exchange rates. Not surprisingly, the revenue amounts per capita are generally lower in developing countries than in most OECD countries, even if differences in purchasing parities are taken into account. There are, however, also major differences across the non-OECD countries, with Brazil, South Africa and Costa Rica raising the largest amounts of revenues from environmentally related taxes, per capita.