The proportion of environmental taxes is decreasing in Sweden

The Swedish government often wants to emphasize that the climate threat is taken more seriously than other countries. But even so, the share of environmental taxes in all taxes decreases every year. The change has occurred both during the bourgeois alliance government and later red-green governments.

But calculated as a percentage of all tax revenue, environmental taxes accounted for six percent in 2009. In 2017, the figure was down 4.8 percent, a decrease of 1.2 percentage points, according to Eurostat statistics.

At the same time, environmental taxes have increased in absolute terms. In 2017, there was close to one billion in tax revenue from energy, transport, natural resources and pollution.

Internationally, Sweden has long had a fairly low proportion of environmental taxes, partly because we have lower taxes on natural resources such as mining. But also because we have relatively high taxes overall.

But we compare with the countries in the Nordic countries, whose tax system is quite similar to ours, so all neighboring countries today have a higher proportion of environmental taxes. Denmark has a maximum of almost eight percent, followed by Finland with 6.8 percent and Norway close to 6 percent.

The January agreement states that a large "green tax exchange" is to be made. So raise taxes on environmentally destructive activities and in return lower the tax on something else. It has been agreed here to reduce employer contributions, but what green taxes to raise have not yet been presented.