Severance taxes and market failure

Journal Article · Thu Jul 01 04:00:00 EDT 1982 · Nat. Resour. J.; (United States)

OSTI ID:6740217

Gulley, D A

Despite the popularity of the severence tax, it is far from an ideal tax. One of its fascinations is that it embodies corrective principles aimed at four different problems (exhaustion, rapid growth, environmental decay, and tax nonneutrality); but it does not resolve any of them and may create new complications in all four areas. The public probably would be better served by separate policy packages, each offering a coherent treatment of one of the problem areas. The proper role of efficiency-promoting taxes and charges remains open to discussion. The traditional purpose is not as a substitute for regulation, but as a means of raising revenues. The inability of an efficiency-promoting charge to address natural-resource issues more fully does not mean there is no need for the revenues, but only confirms that innovative resource management and effective impact mitigation might be better served by innovative policies, such as true effluent fees or quota systems, development gains taxation, and publicly-supporter intergenerational futures markets. 52 references.

• Research Organization: Columbia Univ., New York, NY
• OSTI ID: 6740217
• Journal Information: Nat. Resour. J.; (United States), Journal Name: Nat. Resour. J.; (United States) Vol. 22:3; ISSN NRJOA
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
290200 -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Economics & Sociology
290400* -- Energy Planning & Policy-- Energy Resources
ECONOMIC IMPACT
ECONOMIC POLICY
EVALUATION
GOVERNMENT POLICIES
RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
SEVERANCE TAX
TAXES