The media have picked up an old paper, which was summarised in a recent report.
The Irish Independent got it right: Long-distance commuters are hit hardest by the carbon tax (no surprise there). The Irish Examiner somehow turns this into “rural Ireland”. The paper clearly shows, though, that the tax incidence is lowest in the city centres, increases in the commuter belt, and falls again in the “deep countryside”.
12 replies on “Spatial incidence of a carbon tax”
@Richard,
“The Irish Examiner somehow turns this into “rural Ireland”. ”
If you want to creat a real fuss, stick a “-gate” on the end and maybe call it Manuregate.
Richard,
What’s the difference between the “Spatial incidence of a carbon tax” and the “Spatial incidence of excise duty on petrol”?
@Greg
At present, the carbon tax is on transport fuels only. In spring, selected fuels for heating and cooking will be added. In the paper, we put the tax on all heating and transport fuels.
Of course the spin in the Examiner comes from the IFA. No doubt they will want to be exempt from any tax.
@All
Yes – the IFA are major recipients of the Irish Welfare State [trump the working and nonworking classes every time]…….. and at the broader level re CAP – of the European Welfare State ……. and v. effective Vested Interest Group re paddling own canoe. .. and NO market for land …….. of course they will be exempted from any ‘nuisance taxes’ – their physiocratic economic philosophy does not recognise the concept of tax for themselves – taxes are only for the little people … the land-less, …………. variations on the theme of the Irish property fetish …….
@David O’Donnell – maybe they are all Greek – they don’t like paying taxes either!
@Edgar
Both Irish IFA and Greeks have ‘wealth’ … but socially construct ‘income’ so as to avoid-reduce payment of taxes. Looks like we need some ‘wealth taxes’ to really put these Ferengi under some pressure (-;
@David O’Donnell – I suspect the wealth of farmers has dropped a bit – sites and development land are not worth what they used to be. Unfortunately the CSO seems to have stopped publishing the agricultural land prices but I do suspect they are down.
Looking at the Eurostat dataset on http://nui.epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/show.do?dataset=apri_ap_aland&lang=en the figures for Ireland stop – as @Edgar reports – in 2005 ! Assuming that they moved in parallel with the UK, an estimate (that matches prices reported in the agricultural press) would be about €22,000 per ha, or circa €10,000 per acre. In last week’s Farm Examiner, there were a number of holdings in Munster that the auctioneers expected to sell for about that same figure. So on that basis, prices may have eased a little, but not by as much as might be expected (e.g. compared to tge recently reported 60-90% decline in development lands).
Another paradox to add to the rent-sale price paradox, where rents decreased through the period of the “boom” at the same time as sale prices increased 🙂
@Alan Sloane – yes. I think we need to return to this on another thread. I could never figure out the lack of connection between land prices (where there was no development potential) and the return to land – it must be my German up-bringing.
@ Alan Sloane & Edgar
Ta Alan. Irish agricultural land market is a ‘particularity’ ….. mainly because there is so little of a market – a captured regulatory capture and prob roots in Napoleonic wars of early 19th C and switch from grain to beef in British market – then to the Land League in late 19th C and the market froze…. but the ‘local landed’ have influence etc … I suspect that it will defy neo-classical economic treatment – but yes – another thread.
Apologies for commenting on a months-old post, but I recently made a map which might be of interest to this topic – it’s an analysis of Census 2006 Travel to Work data.
For each DED I looked at the proportion of workers driving more than 15km to work. You can clearly see the spatial pattern Richard refers to in his post.
The map is here: http://www.geographic.ie/maps/irish-census-commuter/ If you would like a higher resolution version just let me know.