Thursday, September 27, 2007

Dingell to introduce a Hybrid Carbon Tax

While the State Central Committee of GPMI recently failed to pass a Carbon Tax proposal, MI representative John Dingell will introduce a bill to phase in a tax on coal, oil and natural gas that will grow to $50/ton of carbon over 5 years.

The bill will use some of the monies to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to address the impact of the increased fuel costs, much like the proposal before the SCC, which would have provided rebates to low income families and individuals.

A summary of Dingell's bill can be found here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why not a $5 or even $50 tax per gallon? Heck why not make gas and motor vehicles illegal?

Dan said...

The Carbon Tax Center, www.carbontax.org, recommends a phased in revenue-neutral carbon tax. Congressman Dingell's proposal is an excellent first step, but the proposed taxes should be higher, ramped in over a longer period and revenue-neutral.

Anonymous said...

Hi Dan, Thanks for the referral to the folks at carbontax.org! But in the scheme of things why try and manage a revenue-neutral system? First off, do we really need another govt bureaucracy? And from the Carbon tax folks I'm confused by the comparison to the Alaska benefit program - that's a shared revenue from a State resource where the people are receiving money for resources removed. We should be focusing on punitive solutions. You don't reward bad behavior with a neutral response; you punish it and correct it.