친환경조세정책이 경제성장에 미치는 영향

Abstract

환경세를 포함한 친환경 조세정책이 경제 성장에 미치는 영향에 관한 논쟁은 현재 진행형이다. 본 연구의 목적은 소득세와 노동세가 존재하는 상황에서 친환경 조세정책을 도입했을 때 그것이 경제성장에 미치는 영향을 내생적 성장 모형을 통해 이론적, 실증적으로 규명하는 데 있다. 본 논문은 이론적으로 크게 두 가지에 초점을 맞추고 있다. 첫째, 환경세수가 오염저감 기술개발을 위한 R&D 투자를 충분히 감당하지 못할 경우 다른 조세의 왜곡이 발생하게 되는데, 이 때 왜곡이 발생하는 조건과 왜곡의 정도를 살펴보았다. 둘째, 세수중립하에서 환경세율이 증가할수록 조세 간의 상호작용으로 인해 일부 조세 세율이 인상될 경우 환경세가 경제성장에 미치는 영향을 분석하였다. 유럽의 14개 OECD 선진국을 대상으로 한 회귀분석 결과, 환경세가 증가함에 따라 소득세율 (implicit income tax rate)은 유의적으로 증가하고 있는 반면, 노동세율 (implicit labor tax rate)은 환경세가 증가함에 따라 감소하지만 유의적인 값을 가지지 못하였다. 즉, 유럽에서의 친환경 조세정책은 환경세의 인상을 가져온 반면, 소득세나 노동세에 대한 부담을 경감시키는 방향으로 작용하지 못한 것으로 추정된다. 또한, 환경세와 경제성장과의 관계를 살펴보기 위한 회귀분석 결과, 환경세율 (implicit energy tax rate)과 경제성장은 유의적으로 부(-)의 상관관계를 나타내고 있다. 이는 노동세의 왜곡을 줄이는 친환경정책을 사용한다 하더라도 만약 소득세의 왜곡이 발생한다면 환경세는 경제성장에 항상 긍정적인 영향을 끼칠 수 없음을 보여준다.; Many researchers have argued that environmental tax can reduce the distortion of some taxes such as labor tax by its revenue recycling effect. However, Bovenberg and Mooij (1995) and Parry (1995) cast doubt on this argument. Their reasoning was such that environmental tax can aggravate labor market distortion by tax interdependency effect between the environmental tax and distortionary taxes, even though the distortion of the labor tax is reduced because of the environmental tax. In contrast, Hettich (1998) pointed out that environmental tax reform can boost economic growth by stimulating studying to accumulate human capital and by reducing non-environmental taxes. However, Fullerton and Kim (2006) analyzed that Hettich's argument may not be substantiated if income tax is large enough and/or pollution efficiency is low enough. On the other hand, under certain conditions, they further contended that revenue neutral environmental tax reform can stimulate economic growth. In this study, by extending the model proposed by Fullerton and Kim (2006), I explored the tax interdependency effect among environmental, labor, and income taxes in order to examine the relationship between environmental tax and economic growth. The theoretical model shows that environmental tax cannot always stimulate economic growth if other taxes such as labor or income tax are distorted when environmental tax rate is increased. However, it is possible that environmental tax boosts economic growth when cutting distortionary taxes is enough to offset the distortion of taxes induced by environmental tax, or improvement of abatement knowledge can sufficiently reduce the cost of production. I have also performed empirical analysis using 14 OECD countries, which have introduced environmental tax reform policy. The main results are as follows. First, regression analysis shows that there is a statistically significant relationship between the increase of implicit energy tax rate and the increase of implicit income tax rate. Meanwhile, empirical analysis does not provide enough evidence to claim that implicit tax rate increase brings about labor tax decrease. We can presume that environmental tax reform policy in Europe did not necessarily mitigate the tax burden of labor or income tax. Second, European experiences show that environmental tax, in fact, did not stimulate economic growth. This result shows that environmental tax reform policy does not guarantee economic growth when the introduction of environmental tax causes distortion of other conventional taxes.