Taxing Polluters an Easy Target Term Paper

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Will ignoring any pollution problem be beneficial to the community? Most businessmen would probably answer that question with a negative, but does that mean they feel compelled to do anything about the problem, even if their corporation was the one that caused it. Currently the answer would be no, but if they were going to be penalized for not doing so, and that penalty was coupled with an incentive for accomplishing the objective, then it would probably be a no-brainer, even based on the businessman's viewpoint.

Peter Coy states; "A few polluters that cannot easily reduce emissions will pay a substantial cost, but those with the technology to cut emissions cheaply will have a far greater incentive to do so than they would have under traditional regulation." The same technology used to accomplish a cleanup, can also be used for other reasons, which is an additional benefit to the corporations.

Another benefit derived from changing the tax code, is that the tax code itself will become an instrument of 'good'. Instead of providing individuals and corporations with incentives to commit 'bad' acts, the tax code could be used to reward 'good' acts, and punish 'bad' acts.

Many experts agree with this statement including J. Andrew Hoerner, the director of research at Redefining Progress (an online Public Affairs Institute) who states; "By taxing activities we want to discourage such as waste and pollution, the tax system can be made to do double duty. Not only does the revenue serve the public interest, but the tax does too."

It would seem, therefore, that the idea of taxing corporations according to the amount of pollution the corporation is generating would be a relatively good idea.

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The tax would most likely need to be offset by a reduction in other corporate taxes in order to be palatable to the business community, but this is actually a good thing, because then the entire taxation approach is changed. It changes from a method almost guaranteed to engender pollution and its ensuing problems, to a method that almost guarantees the exact opposite. There will likely be a few corporations that will continue to commit acts of pollution with the hope of not being caught, but it would seem much more likely that the majority of businessmen will act in their own best interests which (in this case) would actually coincide with the best interests of the community they serve. Not only would the community benefit by the jobs and security provided by the corporation, but the physical qualities of the environment in which the community lives would be a clean and healthy place to live as well. This type of partnership between the government that is taxing the corporation, and the corporation that is being taxed could become a standard across the world on how to achieve a cleaner environment with the help of industry.

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