NIFI Experts Spoke about the Problems of the Transition to Environmental Taxation

On April 26, 2024, the Higher School of Economics hosted a round table organized by the HSE School of Finance and the Saint Petersburg International Mercantile Exchange (SPbMTSB), where mechanisms for stimulating the national carbon market were discussed.
Maxim Ivanov, a researcher at the Center for Sectoral Economics of the NIFI of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, noted that the current fee for negative environmental impact (NWOS), which is also charged for methane emissions, does not compensate for the costs of environmental protection measures: the principle of "polluter pays" is not fulfilled. The risks of manipulation of the payment base are high. There is no discipline in filling out declarations and there is a distortion of the payment base.
Milyausha Pinskaya, head of the Tax Policy Center of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, added that a comparison of emissions according to 2-TP "Air" (a specialized statistical report that reflects information on emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere) and data from declarations on payment for NWOS revealed significant deviations in the data, although we are actually talking about the same indicators. For example, for methane, which is a greenhouse gas, the volume of emissions according to payers' declarations is 2.9 million tons per year, according to 2-TP "Air" 3.4 million tons per year, and according to applications for registration of NWOS facilities 76.2 million tons. In order to implement carbon payments in a balanced manner, it is first necessary to put in order the formation of the payment base.
The round table was attended by: Dmitry Chernyshev, Vice President of JSC SPbMTSB, Irina Ivashkovskaya, Head of the HSE School of Finance, Elena Makeeva, Deputy Head of the HSE School of Finance, Natalia Serdyukova, Lecturer in Tax Disciplines at the HSE School of Finance, Zalina Musayeva, Head of the Department of Methodology for Granting Tax Benefits of the Department of Analysis of the Effectiveness of Preferential Regimes of the Ministry of Finance, Head of Department of Environmental Regulation and Regulation of Greenhouse Gas Emissions of PJSC LUKOIL Grigory Yulkin, Yulia Steshenko, Senior Researcher at the Tax Policy Center of the NIFI of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, and others.
https://www.nifi.ru/ru/news/news-ru/novosti/2487-eksperty-nifi-rasskazali-o-problemakh-perekhoda-k-ekologicheskomu-nalogooblozheniyu