Treasury Docs: Enviro Taxes Could Reach $400 Billion A Year [View All]

September 18, 2009 11:35 PM

Treasury Docs: Enviro Taxes Could Reach $400 Billion A Year

Posted by Declan McCullagh

Bowing to pressure from congressional Republicans, the U.S. Treasury Department late Friday disclosed previously-unreleased calculations that show domestic policies related to climate change could levy a $400 billion a year tax on the American economy.

Most of that revenue would come from companies required to purchase the right to generate greenhouse gases, a concept called cap and trade. If those and other climate change taxes were passed along to consumers, not counting any credits or other tax law changes, the documents indicate the average American household would pay up to $3,522 a year more in higher gasoline, heating oil, electricity, and other energy costs.

One Treasury document (http://www.openmarket.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/foia-release.pdf">PDF) says climate change-related policies could yield additional "revenues up to several percentage points of annual GDP (i.e. equal in size to the corporate income tax)." According to http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=102886,00.html">IRS figures, corporate income tax revenues totaled $395.5 billion in 2007.

The Friday afternoon disclosure comes after a tempestuous few days in Washington, which started when the free-market http://www.cei.org/">Competitive Enterprise Institute obtained redacted versions of the documents through the Freedom of Information Act and http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/15/taking_liberties/entry5314040.shtml">published them on Tuesday. Some Republicans, including Sen. Lamar Alexander and Rep. Fred Upton, dubbed the edited documents "censored" and http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/17/taking_liberties/entry5318647.shtml">called on the Obama administration to publish the full versions with all the cost calculations included.

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