With the success so far recorded by the Ifueko Omoigui Okauru-led Federal Inland Revenue Service, a

new tax policy that will check the damage being done to the country’s environment is certainly not out of place.

The ministry of environment and its agencies since their creation have been making efforts to address environmental issues like erosion, desertification and pollution, but have been grappling with inadequate funding from government, resulting in poor staffing and other challenges.

From experience, Nigerians fare better when made to pay penalty for an action or inaction, which explains the noncommittal attitude of most Nigerians to campaigns designed to mobilise them to protect the environment.

Deforestation has become a common feature in all parts of the country, with compromised efforts at regrowing the environment.

All sorts of vehicles are imported into the country daily, most, with old engines that European governments have phased out to protect their environment.

These find their way into Nigeria and raise the pollution level.

Some manufacturing companies dispose their waste into rivers within their domain and endanger the lives of Nigerians who live off such water bodies.

According to Tax Policy Centre, Green taxes (also called “environmental taxes” or “pollution taxes”) are excise taxes on environmental pollutants or on goods whose use produces such pollutants.

The centre maintains that economic theory suggests that taxes on polluting emissions will reduce environmental harm in the least costly manner, by encouraging changes in behavior by those firms and households that can reduce their pollution at the lowest cost.

A lecturer at the Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State, Dr Fakele Adediran, who specialises in accounting and taxation, recently called for the implementation of environmental laws to protect the country’s ecosystem and rainforest resources.

According to him, such laws would ascertain proper harnessing of the environment and stressing that “On the environmental tax issue, let there be a law to take care of that at the state government level.

The Tax Policy Centre said that: “In practice, green taxes-even indirect ones, on proxies for emissions or on related goods-have rarely been imposed. Some examples can be found in Europe.

“Pollution can be regarded as a cost of producing goods and services, but one that is borne not by the polluter but instead mostly by others in the form of a damaged environment (in forms ranging from noxious odors to impaired health to changes in climate).

“A pure environmental tax aims to ensure that polluters face the true cost of their activities by charging them for the damages caused to others.

Direct taxes on emissions are economically efficient because they give polluters an incentive to reduce their pollution up to the point where further reduction would cost more than paying the tax, and to do so in the least costly way.”

On the other hand, the centre noted that indirect taxes, such as taxes on related goods, or alternative policies, such as mandated technology standards, may not reduce pollution in the least costly way. For example, imposing a higher gasoline tax to reduce the environmental damage from automobile emissions gives drivers no incentive to maintain their cars’ pollution control equipment, and mandating pollution control equipment provides no incentive to drive less.