Does Australia have the highest carbon tax compared to other countries? > Check the facts
Who: “The rest of the world [is] not going anywhere near carbon taxes or emission trading schemes.” Tony Abbott.
Mr. Abbott has also claimed that Australia has “the world’s biggest carbon tax”.
The Claim: That no other country has a scheme to place a price on carbon and Australia has the world’s biggest tax.
The Facts: Australia is not the only country to put a price on carbon. Many other countries in the world have done the same and all OECD countries have some type of carbon pricing mechanism. Australia’s tax rate is also relatively small compared to the OECD average.
Discussion of evidence: The OECD has recently released a report comparing the carbon tax rates of OECD countries. All OECD countries have some type of mechanism.
The report states that “Australia and the Americas have the lowest effective tax rates [on CO2]”. Australia’s carbon tax rate is the 5th lowest out of the 34 OECD countries and is well below average. The graph below illustrates this:
Between the Lines Newsletter
The biggest stories and the best analysis from the team at the Australia Institute, delivered to your inbox every fortnight.
You might also like
10 reasons why Australia does not need company tax cuts
1/ Giving business billions of dollars in tax cuts means starving schools, hospitals and other services. Giving business billions of dollars in tax cuts means billions of dollars less for services like schools and hospitals. If Australia cut company tax from 30% to 25% this would give business about $20 billion in its first year,
Tax reform isn’t hard – slug multinationals and subsidise the things we want more of
Taxes are the price we pay for civilisation, but they are also a tool we can use to change the shape of our economy, not just its size.
Koala sanctuary may come with diabolical trade off
Environmentalists rejoiced on the weekend when the NSW Government announced it planned to incorporate 176 thousand hectares of forest into the long-proposed Great Koala National Park.