Think tank Green Alliance, supported by Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, is launching a project to build a strong public and political mandate for tax reform to drive low impact lifestyles, jobs and economic prosperity.
The project will run for three years and will look at how tax can be made more beneficial for the environment and help people make sustainable decisions.
It will add practical suggestions to the increasingly loud calls for major reform. For example, the Committee on Climate Change and the Grantham Institute at the LSE have argued that carbon pricing must feature in a green recovery.
MPs are also interested, with the Treasury Select Committee reviewing HMT’s role in achieving net-zero and the Environmental Audit Committee asking, in its inquiry into post-Covid recovery, how the Autumn budget can “be used to shift taxation from economically beneficial things…to environmental harms, such as pollution and waste”.
This project will take a multidisciplinary approach, exploring the history of taxation, behavioural science, analysis of alternative approaches used abroad and comparisons of fiscal instruments.
To inform its analysis, Green Alliance has announced a high-level expert advisory board. Confirmed members of the TransformTax advisory board are:
- Arun Advani, assistant professor in economics and impact director of the Centre for Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE) at Warwick University.
- Sam Fankhauser, director at LSE’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
- Dominic Hogg, chairman of Eunomia Research & Consulting.
- Hector Pollitt, director and head of modelling at Cambridge Econometrics, the global economics consultancy.
- Lorraine Whitmarsh, professor of environmental psychology at University of Bath, and director of the Centre for Climate Change & Social Transformation (CAST).