Guide to 'Financial instruments' section
The implementation of environment policy comes with a price tag. This applies to the government, which for example uses subsidies to attempt to encourage environmentally-acceptable behaviour from companies and households, but also gives tax breaks to businesses which, for example, have to invest in measures to meet environmental quality standards imposed by the government.As a result of the imposition of environmental levies and taxes by government, companies and consumers have to pay more for the restoration or preservation of a clean environment or to compensate for the pollution of the environment.
Index Financial instruments
- Revenues from environmental levies in the Netherlands, 1985-2003*
- Green taxes in the Netherlands, 1985-2002
- Environmental taxes in the Netherlands, 1990-2002
- Rates for some environmental levies, green taxes and disposal charges in the Netherlands, 1990-2003*
- Revenue from disposal charges in the Netherlands, 1995-2002
- Environmental tax incentives: Dutch government expenditure 1996-2000
Definitions
The table below defines a few common concepts. Not all the tables and figures in this section follow the definitions used in 'Costing and financing environmental management'. Indicators based on other definitions are highlighted in the text.
| Environmental levy | Levies introduced to finance specific environmental measures carried out by the government. |
| Fiscal incentive | Scheme in which companies are given tax relief on their taxable income when they make environmentally friendly investments. |
| Disposal charge | The disposal charge is a support scheme for the environmentally acceptable disposal of various categories of waste. The manufacturers/importers are responsible for collecting and processing the various categories of waste in an environmentally friendly way. Financing is partly funded from a surcharge added to the price of new products. |
| Environmental taxes | Taxes introduced with the aim of achieving a shift from tax on income to environment-based tax in order to achieve a balanced spread of the burden on the corporate sector and households. They include the fuel levy, groundwater tax, a tax on uranium 235, the Regulatory Energy Tax (also known as the 'ecotax') and a tax on tap water. |
| Green taxes | Levies designed to increase prices and therefore discourage activities that burden the environment. The revenue from these taxes is not specifically used to finance government environmental measures. |
