Environmental taxes aim to encourage both producers and consumers to limit or reduce environmental pollution and to use natural resources responsibly. They are defined as taxes whose tax base has a negative impact on the environment.
The level of environmental tax revenues does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about environmental behavior. Thus, high environmental tax revenues can either be the result of high taxation of environmentally harmful products (independent of the motives of such tax systems) or of high use of such products (in the case of low taxation). A combination of both effects is also possible.
At the international level, OECD and Eurostat working groups have worked together with countries to develop a uniform concept for recording eco-taxes. The data basis for the compilation of statistics on eco-taxes are the national accounts (NA) and the government finance statistics. They are published annually for Austria.