VCCI: Environmental protection tax and fee should not be applied to coal and gasoline products.

September 6, 2023 08:35 Ha Linh Print article

ANTD.VN - Gasoline, oil, and coal products are subject to environmental protection tax under the 2010 Law on Environmental Protection Tax, but the Ministry of Finance has proposed to continue collecting fees, leading to the risk of overlap.

Nguy cơ chồng chéo các khoản thu bảo vệ môi trường với mặt hàng xăng dầu và than ảnh 1

Risk of overlapping environmental protection revenues with petroleum and coal products

Responding to the Ministry of Finance's Official Dispatch requesting comments on the draft Decree regulating environmental protection fees for emissions, the Vietnam Federation of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) said that there is an overlap between environmental protection fees and environmental protection taxes.

Citing specific evidence, VCCI said that the 2010 Law on Environmental Protection Tax stipulates: "Environmental protection tax is an indirect tax, collected on products and goods (hereinafter referred to as goods) that, when used, cause negative impacts on the environment."

Gasoline, oil, and coal products are subject to environmental protection tax. The reason these products are subject to tax is because of their negative impact on the environment when burned, emitting polluting gases.

Specifically, in Document No. 24/TTr-CP dated April 6, 2010 of the Government submitted to the National Assembly on the draft Law on Environmental Protection Tax, the reason for including coal in the taxable category is because "when coal is used for combustion purposes, it will release gases such as _CO2 and _SO2 into the environment, which are all gases that have negative effects on human health."

This draft Decree continues to propose to impose fees on industrial emissions such as dust, CO, SO _x , NO _x .

Thus, industrial establishments using coal and gasoline for combustion in the production process will continue to have to pay environmental protection fees that overlap with environmental protection taxes for the same act.

The review report on the draft Law on Environmental Protection Tax No. 1287/BC-UBTCNS12 dated April 21, 2010 of the Finance and Budget Committee of the 12th National Assembly pointed out the risk of overlap between environmental protection fees and environmental protection tax on coal.

According to VCCI, environmental protection fees have an advantage over environmental protection taxes in influencing behavior change. Environmental protection fees control output, which includes factors such as combustion technology, emission treatment measures and discharge locations, which are factors that environmental protection taxes cannot control.

Thus, environmental protection fees have the effect of creating incentives for waste generators to improve combustion technology, enhance gas treatment measures and change to more suitable discharge locations. However, monitoring the collection of environmental protection fees is more complicated than that of environmental protection taxes.

Therefore, VCCI recommends that the drafting agency adjust the content of the draft to avoid the above overlap. It is possible to consider some options as follows: Regulating the deduction of indirect environmental protection tax that production establishments have to pay when purchasing input coal, gasoline, and oil to serve the production process when declaring and paying environmental protection fees for output emissions;

In case it is found that tax deduction monitoring is too complicated and costly, it is possible to propose to the National Assembly to abolish the environmental protection tax on coal, and instead only collect environmental protection fees.

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