Candidates for taxing environmental bads at national level

This issue paper seeks to answer the following questions: If we were to extend the approach of the Energy Taxation Directive to set minimum tax rates to a wider basket of products/resources and environmental impacts: what environmental impacts should we target through the imposition of an environmental tax, and how should they be developed and implemented? The paper offers a starter for the discussion of such taxes applied across Member States as part of an Environmental Tax Reform, so not at the EU level. The goal is to clarify how environmental taxes (also referred to as green taxes) could be better designed and more widely applied to address issues such as water pollution, air pollution, soil pollution, damage to nature etc. Which are the best candidates for such an extension? As a result of the analysis, a list of 12 possible taxes that could be taken forward is proposed from a wider list of over 40 environmental taxes that are currently imposed in at least one of the Member States.