21 November 2022 – Online conversation
The workshop was organized by the Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, as part of the Central European Professors’ Network, coordinated by the University of Miskolc – Central European Academy
About workshop:
Lecturers:
Anna Románová Vartašová (Faculty of Law, UPJŠ in Košice, SK)
Gábor Hulkó (Faculty of Law, Széchenyi István University, Gyor, HU)
Michal Radvan (Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, CZ)
Date: Monday 21 November 2022, 1,00 – 2,00 PM CET
Venue: Brno, Masaryk University, Faculty of Law; Online via MS Teams
Costs: Free of charge
Registration: by 14 November 2022 via email at michal.radvan@law.muni.cz
Annotation of the workshop:
The workshop – dissemination event on Ecological Tools in Tax Law aims to present the most frequent tools for how governments in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary draft their tax law to protect the environment. The most common and also rarely used “ecological” taxes, charges, and other public payments will be analyzed regarding their potential to influence taxpayers’ behavior to protect the environment. All presenters are respected experts in the European region in taxation and public revenues.
Ecological Tools in Tax Law
There are several types of instruments to mitigate climate change: normative (legal), economic, conceptual, educational, and voluntary. The conceptual tools create the factual framework consisting of various plans, programs, forecasts, and other concepts built according to the basic principles of environmental law. Normative tools are the most important as they create a set of specific prohibitions, orders, permits, and opinions; natural persons and legal entities are obliged to comply with them. Normative tools include state supervision, too. The voluntary tools are not subjects of state control. As tax lawyers, we are focusing on economic tools.
Generally, it is necessary to state that almost every tax sensu lato includes some ecological aspects in its legal regulation. For clarity, it is possible to divide taxes sensu lato into two groups: taxes sensu stricto collected on a more or less regular basis without any equivalent compensation for the taxpayer and charges (fees) collected on a more or less irregular basis with appropriate consideration for payment. The title of the public payment is decisive; all taxes, charges, fees, levies, etc., have either tax or charge nature.
To sum up, ecological aspects in taxation are instruments to mitigate climate change and achieve Europe’s objective of becoming a competitive, low-carbon, and energy-efficient economy. The conditio sine qua non is that the construction components of the taxes must be defined reasonably. Moreover, the European Union must not be the only region in the world implementing instruments to mitigate climate change. Powerful economies such as the USA, China, India, Russia, etc., must adopt the same tools because only then will the European Union not create an economic environment in which it is uncompetitive.
The workshop took place on Monday, 21 November 2022. Three leading tax law experts in their countries were asked to present their contributions. The section started with the opening note by Michal Radvan.
The first presenter Anna Vartašová, representing P. J. Sararik University in Košice, Slovakia, presented her definition of tax with an environmental aspect: a tax whose tax base consists of a physical unit (or its substitute) of something that has a negative impact on the environment (considering taxes in a broad sense). She analyzed the legal regulation of enviro-related taxes in Slovakia. She was talking about energy taxes (excise duties, tax on the nuclear facility, charge for storage of gases and liquids, emission allowances), taxes on transportation (motor vehicle tax, motor vehicle registration fee, tax on the entry and stay of a motor vehicle in the historical part of the city), taxeson pollution (fees for discharge of sewage water into surface waters, air pollution charges, waste landfilling charges, payment for the mining area, and taxes on resources (payment for extracted minerals). She has summarized that energy taxes are the most important from an economic perspective. Concerning the share of enviro-related taxes on GDP, Slovakia is the leader in the region; however, the share is still low compared to the most developed countries in Europe.
Gabor Hulkó from Széchenyi István University in Gyor, Hungary, talked about regulation models concerning environmental protection in combination with economic tools. He was also dealing with EU policies in this area. He was more detailed in Hungarian public policies, specifically in the following areas:
- Strengthening environmental awareness and thinking;
- Social participation, environmental information;
- Spatial and urban development, planning and protection of the environment;
- Strategy development, planning;
- Legislation and enforcement;
- Development policy, investments;
- Research and development, eco-innovation, environmental technology;
- Contributing to the development of EU environmental policy and implementation and International cooperation.
He has also summarized the economic sense of environmental taxes revenues (energy taxes, pollution taxes, resources taxes, and transport taxes).
Michal Radvan (Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, Czech Republic) has introduced instruments to mitigate climate change:
- Normative (legal) – create a set of specific prohibitions, orders, permits, and opinions; include state supervision;
- Economic – almost every tax includes some eco-logical aspects ;
- Conceptual – create the factual framework consisting of various plans, proforecastse-casts, and other concepts built according to the basic principles of environmental law;
- Educational;
- Voluntary – not subjects of state control.
He analyzed the legal regulation of energy taxes, taxes on motor vehicles, pollution taxes, and resources taxes. He also pointed out that all taxes do have certain ecological aspects, mostly hidden in the list of exemptions. He concluded that to accept instruments to mitigate climate change by the public, it is necessary to create a good mixture of conceptual, normative, and economic tools supported by various educational and voluntary tools. It is possible to state that the Czech legal regulation prefers positive instruments supporting environmentally beneficial behavior.
