Carbon-Tax Rebates: the Untold Story

Many Canadians aren’t even aware they can get a credit on their income taxes, a new international survey involving UdeM political scientist Erick Lachapelle finds. 

Taxing corporations and consumers for the amount of carbon emissions they generate can be a great way to deal with climate change – so say many leading politicians, economists and environmental activists. In Canada, we’ve had a federal carbon tax since early 2019.

Yet those same taxes also generate controversy wherever they’re adopted or proposed, even causing political leaders to lose elections. In response, proponents advocate recycling carbon-tax revenues to citizens as income-tax credits – and some jurisdictions like Canada’s do.

Now, to find out if such incentives actually win people over to the idea, an international group of political scientists has surveyed thousands of people in Canada and Switzerland, where carbon-tax credits are issued.

The researchers’ findings are published today in Nature Climate Change. We spoke to co-author Erick Lachapelle, an associate professor of political science at Université de Montréal, about the survey and its implications for public policy – and public attitudes – here in Canada.

Publication: Matto Mildenberger, et al., Limited impacts of carbon tax rebate programmes on public support for carbon pricing, Nature Climate Change (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41558-021-01268-3.

Original Story Source:  University of Montreal