Yunlin County pushes carbon tax to pressure government

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Taipei, Feb. 23 (CNA) Yunlin County has approved a local carbon tax that it hopes will pressure the central government into reconsidering how it allocates funds to local governments.

Yunlin County Magistrate Su Chih-fen on Monday said the county’s carbon tax measure was not proposed to punish companies but rather to compel the central government to reconsider its “unfair” allocation of funds to local governments.

The south-central county is home to the Formosa Plastics Group’s petrochemical industrial park, one of the world’s biggest, centered around its sixth naphtha cracker plant.

The complex generates slightly over one-quarter of Taiwan’s carbon dioxide emissions and has long been the target of environmentalists proposing a carbon tax.

Yunlin County believes it is being shortchanged by the central government, which, according to county calculations, collects NT$47 billion (US$1.36 billion) in business taxes from Formosa Plastics Group companies operating in the Mailiao complex but only returns NT$500 million in disbursements to the county government.

The county estimates it could collect NT$9 billion a year from the complex if its local carbon tax were imposed.

The Yunlin County Council recently passed a bill drafted by the county government to levy a carbon tax, but the feasibility of the bill was reportedly questioned by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Affairs.

Su questioned why the administration said Yunlin County “might not be permitted” to take the initiative to impose the tax, and urged the central government to reconsider its “unfair” distribution of funds to local governments.

She also appealed to President Ma Ying-jeou to fulfill his campaign pledge to address the idea of a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. If the central government is not currently interested in imposing such a tax nationwide, Su said, the administration should allow the county to impose its local carbon tax on a trial basis.