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Griffiths, Shelley --- "Green Taxation: The New Zealand Story" [2011] ELECD 732; in Cullen, Richard; VanderWolk, Jefferson; Xu, Yan (eds), "Green Taxation in East Asia" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: Green Taxation in East Asia

Editor(s): Cullen, Richard; VanderWolk, Jefferson; Xu, Yan

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849803007

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Green Taxation: The New Zealand Story

Author(s): Griffiths, Shelley

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

9. Green taxation: the New Zealand
story
Shelley Griffiths*

1. INTRODUCTION

When I began background research for this chapter, I went to the website
"Google New Zealand" and entered a search for pages from New Zealand
matching the search term "behaviour modification and green tax". The
first "hit" was to the New Zealand Green Party's youth affairs policy where
"green" and "tax" and "behaviour modification" happened to appear in
the co-leader's policy statement but in a totally unlinked way. Subsequent
"hits" were of no more relevance. Not to be deterred, I altered the search to
"behaviour modification and tax". Here, the first two hits were references
to a US case appearing in New Zealand websites and thereafter the subse-
quent hits were of no more relevance. I share this anecdote, not to demon-
strate my haphazard research skills, but to highlight the fact that behaviour
modification and tax are strange bedfellows in the New Zealand context.
Since 1984, successive New Zealand governments have remained commit-
ted to a broad-base low-rate income tax model. The main focus of reform
in the 1980s was on broadening the tax base and lowering marginal rates. It
was a move toward bringing the tax base closer to the economic concept of
income. Previously, the system was one that could be described as narrow-
base high-rate, and a major cause of that was the provision of incentives or
concessions for activities that were seen as having social or economic merit.
...