The Kaohsiung City Government recently approved the Autonomous Act on Levying Carbon Dioxide Tax (碳稅徵收自治條例), which allows it to tax polluting businesses.
Director-General of the city’s Bureau of Finance Lei Chung-dar (雷仲達) said on Tuesday that the act was meant to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide in Kaohsiung, one of the major industrial cities in Taiwan.
The act requires businesses in the city that emit more than 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide every year to pay a “carbon dioxide tax” to the city government, Lei said.
Businesses whose annual carbon dioxide emissions do not exceed 2 million tonnes would be obliged to pay NT$50 for each tonne. Businesses that emit between 2 million tonnes and 4 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year will have to pay NT$100 million (US$2.8 million).
Businesses with emissions between 4 million tonnes and 6 million tonnes are required to pay NT$220 million, while companies whose annual emissions exceed 10 million tonnes will have to pay NT$700 million.
Lei said the Act targets polluting sectors such as the steel industry, the petroleum industry and the machinery industry, adding that the Act was expected to bring about NT$2.8 billion in tax revenue each year, the majority of which would come from China Steel Corp (中鋼), Taiwan Power Co’s (台電) power plant in Dalin (大林) and CPC Corp, Taiwan’s (台灣中油) refinery in Kaohsiung.
Lei said that although the central government had reservations about levying a carbon dioxide tax, Hualien and Yunlin counties had passed similar regulations.
“As Kaohsiung is an industrial city, it is responsible for massive carbon dioxide emissions. The city government has tried to improve the situation over the years to ensure sustainability of the environment,” Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chu (陳菊) said.
“It is a global trend to tax polluting industries,” she said.
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