Basic questions about environmental taxes

Abstract

Currently there is usual that states use the tax system for interventionist politics. In fact, it is increasingly common to find taxes whose main purpose goes beyond the mere acquisition of resources, configured them as real regulatory mechanisms of behavior. So, these taxes coexist harmoniously with those who have a goaloriented resourcing. Regulator taxes (or taxes with non-fiscal purposes) have a highly varied range of possibilities, which would be virtually impossible to enumerate them without leaving any case out of the list. Among the most common regulator taxes we can cite environmental taxes, in which we will focus in this study. For this purpose we structure the work based on two main parts: in the first part, as a preliminary part, we will give a general concept of taxes with non-fiscal purposes and in the second part we will focus on environmental taxes, analyzing their terminology, definition and relationship to the ability to pay principle. Finally, we will present the final conclusions.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5377/derecho.v0i16.1489

Revista de Derecho No.16 2013 pp.125-146