Central Statistics Office Ireland

Environment Division

Ardee Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6, Ireland

Environmental tax statistics are part of the environmental accounts which constitute a satellite account to national accounts. Environmental tax revenue series display total tax revenue by category of environmental taxes: energy taxes, transport taxes and the sum of pollution and resource taxes.

Environmental tax revenue is broken down by:
A. ESA 2010 national accounts classification,
B. Environmental tax category,
C. Sector/economic activity of tax payer

A. Classification according to national accounts (ESA 2010)

The following three types of taxes are distinguished:

• D2: taxes on production and imports,
• D5: current taxes on income, wealth,      
• D91: capital taxes.

B. Classification according to environmental tax category

For analytical purposes, the environmental taxes are divided into four categories:

• Energy taxes (including CO2 taxes),
• Transport taxes,
• Pollution taxes,
• Resource taxes (excluding taxes on oil and gas extraction).

C. Environmental taxes by economic activity

Environmental tax revenues are allocated to the different tax payers:

• Economic activity according to the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE Rev. 2)
• Households as consumers
• Non-residents
• Not allocated (impossible to be allocated to one of the categories mentioned above)

Environmental taxes by economic activity data cover taxes payable by all sectors of the economy: producers (economic activities by NACE), households as consumers, and non-residents. 

The environmental tax statistics are compiled based on Eurostat’s 2013 'Environmental taxes - a statistical guide'. 

Definition of an environmental tax (Regulation (EU) N° 691/2011)

An environmental tax is a tax whose tax base is a physical unit (or a proxy of a physical unit) of something that has a proven, specific negative impact on the environment, and which is identified in ESA 2010 as a tax. Only payments that are identified as taxes in the national accounts can be considered as environmental taxes. Other types of payments to government are not considered. Environmental tax statistics rely on the tax definition of the national accounts as a reference because this improves international comparability of the statistics, and allows integration of the tax data with the national accounts and with systems of environmental and economic accounting. (See also the "ESA 2010 Manual of Government Deficit and Debt" which contains Eurostat decisions on recording of taxes and social contributions).

In order to define environmental taxes precisely and to ensure international comparability, a list of tax bases was established. All taxes defined as such in the national accounts and relying on the tax bases listed below comply with the definition of an environmental tax.

Value added type taxes (VAT) are excluded from the definition of environmental taxes. This is mainly because of the special characteristics of this type of tax. VAT is a tax levied on all products (with few exceptions), and it is deductible for many producers, but not for households. Correspondingly, it does not influence relative prices in the same way that the environmental taxes do through specific environmental tax bases. Also excluded are taxes on the extraction of oil and gas. These taxes are often designed to capture the resource rent and the related payments should be classified as property income.

The statistical units are the institutional units General Government (S.13) and Institutions of the EU (S.212).

The target population is all units of general government sector and institutions of the EU.

Ireland.

Annual data are available from 1995 to 2022

Not applicable.

Million Euro

The data refer to the calendar year.

The data collection on environmental taxes by economic activity is part of the EU Regulation N° 691/2011 on European environmental economic accounts of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 July 2011 (Regulation (EU) No 691/2011). This Regulation provides a framework for the development of various types of environmental accounts. Environmental taxes by economic activity are included in Annex II of this Regulation.

The national tax lists are collected by Eurostat as a complement of table 9 of the ESA 2010 (European system of accounts) transmission programme.  National Accounts are compiled in accordance with the European System of Accounts (ESA 2010) adopted in the form of a Council Regulation dated 21 May 2013, No 549/2013 and published in the Official Journal L 174 of the 26/06/2013. A consolidated version is available on http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32013R0549&from=EN

Not applicable.

All information supplied to the CSO is treated as strictly confidential. The Statistics Act, 1993 sets stringent confidentiality standards: Information collected may be used only for statistical purposes, and no details that might be related to an identifiable person or business undertaking may be divulged to any other government department or body.

These national statistical confidentiality provisions are reinforced by the following EU legislation:

• Council Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 (PDF 88KB) on European statistics for data collected for EU statistical purposes.

Further details are outlined in the CSO's Code of Practice on Statistical Confidentiality.

The data have not required confidentiality measures thus far. Should confidentiality issues arise, confidential data will not be published.

https://www.cso.ie/en/csolatestnews/releasecalendar/

https://www.cso.ie/en/csolatestnews/releasecalendar/

A statistical release on Environment Taxes is published on the CSO website annually: https://www.cso.ie/en/statistics/environmentaccounts/environmenttaxes/

Annual

CSO website: https://www.cso.ie/en/statistics/environmentaccounts/environmenttaxes/

CSO website: https://www.cso.ie/en/statistics/environmentaccounts/environmenttaxes/

CSO website: https://data.cso.ie/product/ETA

Not available.

Not applicable.

Not applicable

Not available.

CSO website: https://www.cso.ie/en/methods/environmentaccounts/environmenttaxes/

Not available.

Quality report published on CSO website: https://www.cso.ie/en/methods/qualityreports/environmenttaxes/

The estimation is based on maintaining overall environment tax amounts from the NTL as control totals throughout the estimation procedure. The procedure itself follows the guidelines set out in the Eurostat publication, “Environmental taxes A statistical Guide, 2013 edition”. The  estimation procedure has been coded in SAS, this approach ensures the data and programming are maintained separately (unlike an Excel based solution). Thus new data that might involve revisions can be readily incorporated without contaminating the procedural aspects of the estimation. Accordingly the estimates are considered reliable. Data processing is based on good quality data sources such as CSO national accounts data and the CSO Business Energy Use survey.

Quality assurance is set out in the quality report: https://www.cso.ie/en/methods/qualityreports/environmenttaxes/. This follows the general standard setout by the CSO for methods and quality.

Overall data are of very good quality. Data are collected from reliable sources applying high standards with regard to the methodology.

Environmental policy aims to reach environmental and sustainable development goals. Policy makers use incentive-based tools to ensure that environmental solutions are found at least cost, for correcting externalities and/or raising revenues for specific purposes. Accordingly, detailed environment tax data are needed to enable policy makers assess the environmental impact of a certain tax, such as the reduction in pollution resulting from the introduction of a new tax, and more importantly assess the proportion of overall tax burden that is environmental. This release provides key data within the overall framework of environment statistics that contributes to addressing these needs for Ireland. 

Not available.

Not available.

Not applicable.

The main data sources are the NTL, the Use Table from Supply-Use Tables (SUT) compiled by National Accounts and CSO Business Energy Use (BEU) survey data. All these data sources are aggregate data. Environment Taxes are then estimated by a process that involves applying a NACE breakdown to NTL aggregates using NACE distribution keys obtained from SUT and BEU data for the relevant year. The distribution key applied depends on the particular type of tax. Significantly, only relevant products (rows) are selected from the UT to create weights for distributing NTL aggregate tax amounts. For example, for certain energy taxes Electricity and Gas (NACE 35) production is the row of the table chosen to compute weights to distribute the aggregate amount of tax across each industry using that product. 

As stated the estimation is based on maintaining overall environment tax amounts from the NTL as control totals throughout the estimation procedure. The procedure itself follows the guidelines set out in the Eurostat publication, “Environmental taxes A statistical Guide, 2013 edition”. The Irish specific estimation procedure has been coded in SAS, this approach ensures the data and programming are maintained separately (unlike an Excel based solution). Thus new data that might involve revisions can be readily incorporated without contaminating the procedural aspects of the estimation. Accordingly the estimates are considered reliable and the overall accuracy is considered to be good.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

There is no non-sampling error.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Ireland submits data to Eurostat by the Regulation deadline of T+16 months. Eurostat disseminates data within about 24 months of the end of the reference year. Ireland normally publishes a national statistical release within 12 months of the reference year.

The national statistical release is published within 12 months of the reference year.

The Eurostat dataset is published within 24 months of the reference year.

The data are submitted to Eurostat in advance of the Regulation deadline of 30th April Y+2.

The data are submitted to Eurostat in advance of the Regulation deadline of 30th April Y+2.

Only national level data are compiled by Ireland. However, use of this Eurostat manual and the checks by Eurostat naturally enhance the comparability between countries.

Not applicable.

Comparability over time is high as the methodology for environmental taxes follows a well-defined standard. Comparable time series are available starting with 1995 reference year. Comparability over time is maintained via the use of the National Tax List for overall tax figures.

Annually from 1995 to 2022.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

The data reported are internally coherent.

N/A

Revisions to the aggregate figures are made annually in line with revisions to the NTL. Revisions to the NACE distribution are made as more up to date Use tables become available. 

Revisions are made annually in line with revisions to the NTL and NACE disaggregation data sources.

Revisions to NTL Environment Taxes were around €132 million (downwards) in 2022. Total Environment Taxes were around €4,395 million. The revisions were about 3% of the total.

In addition, revisions were made to the sector breakdown of ETS CO2 Taxes. The revised distribution is based on a change in methodology such that the NACE distribution is based on ETS data on verified emissions and free allocation of emission permits by sector in Ireland. This method/data revision was carried out for 2012-2021 and the main impacts were:

• a significant reduction in energy taxes assigned to households for most years from 2012-2021,
• a significant increase in energy taxes assigned to NACE D for all years between 2013 and 2021. 
• a reduction in energy taxes assigned to NACE G & I-U in most years from 2012-2021
• changes to NACE H energy taxes
• minor changes to other NACE sectors

These figures for 1995-2022 are final.

The primary data source is Ireland's national tax list transmitted every year to Eurostat as a complement of table 9 of the ESA 2010 transmission programme. 

Annual

The NTL is provided by CSO Government Accounts Division annually.

Data validation is carried out through validity checks against previous years and in cooperation with Eurostat.

The starting point for the estimation is the total amount of taxes paid in the National Tax List (NTL) that are classified as environment taxes.

For non-fuel ETEA taxes, the NTL tax base headings are associated with NACE Rev 2. product headings. The identification of individual tax bases by type of tax was accomplished jointly by National Account Division and Environment Division in CSO. For each tax the associated NACE Rev 2. product manufactured or service delivered that is primarily responsible for the tax burden is identified. The corresponding row in the Use Table (UT) is extracted and weights for each NACE Rev. 2 industry involved in making this product or delivering this service are computed and applied to the NTL figures.

Fuel taxes are designated as a type of Energy tax. Estimates of fuel taxes follow along similar lines to non-fuel taxes outlined above subject to a few notable differences. Firstly, the business versus household distribution of a Fuel tax is computed from Personal Consumption Expenditure data. For their own purposes PCE within the National Accounts separately allocate fuel taxes to businesses or households. We take the relative proportions of these amounts and apply it to each tax. The business portion of the tax is then estimated using CSO Business Energy Use survey data on fuel use by NACE. 

Not applicable.

For non-fuel ETEA taxes, the NTL tax base headings are associated with NACE Rev 2. product headings. The identification of individual tax bases by type of tax was accomplished jointly by National Account Division and Environment Division in CSO. For each tax the associated NACE Rev 2. product manufactured or service delivered that is primarily responsible for the tax burden is identified. The corresponding row in the Use Table (UT) is extracted and weights for each NACE Rev. 2 industry involved in making this product or delivering this service are computed and applied to the NTL figures.

Fuel taxes are designated as a type of Energy tax. Estimates of fuel taxes follow along similar lines to non-fuel taxes outlined above subject to a few notable differences. Firstly, the business versus household distribution of a Fuel tax is computed from Personal Consumption Expenditure data. For their own purposes PCE within the National Accounts separately allocate fuel taxes to businesses or households. We take the relative proportions of these amounts and apply it to each tax. The business portion of the tax is then estimated using CSO Business Energy Use survey data on fuel use by NACE. 

We take the Use table weighting for exports amount of tax and further allocate it according to overseas tourism numbers of tourist to (tourist+buiness).

To comply with the spirit of EU Regulation (EU) 691/2011 we have endeavoured to make available a continuous series of environment tax estimates from 2000 onward. To facilitate this it has been necessary to compile the UTs for 2000 to 2007 under the NACE Rev. 2 classification as UTs for those years are currently only published in Ireland under the older NACE Rev. 1.1 classification of economic activity. Firstly, values for activity codes headings with a one-to-one match are copied directly, about two thirds of all matches were of this type. Where mismatches occur two methods are adopted. Specifically, many-to-one matches from NACE Rev. 1.1 to Rev 2. are simple aggregations. For one-to-many activity code headings matched from Rev. 1.1 to Rev 2 a split of the Rev. 1.1 amount was needed. The weights used to allocate the single NACE Rev. 1.1 amount in the UT to many NACE Rev 2 amounts was derived from the corresponding split of the United Kingdom’s UT for relevant year. Because of the two-way structure of the UT the allocation was applied both row wise and column wise to arrive at a valid two-way allocation. This highly intricate procedure was programmed in SAS to ensure the structure of the two-way transformations applied were identical across all years 2000-2007, in other words only the within year weights changed from year to year. The resulting NACE Rev. 2 UT was then used as described earlier to compile the environment taxes estimates for the years 2000 to 2007. Backcasting was also required for the year 1995 to 1999. These years were generated using a time series model. Specifically we applied curvilinear time trend (PROC Forecast in SAS) to each reversed NACE Rev. 2 sub-series within the energy and transport tax categories. These values were then proportionately adjusted so that the within year totals for that tax category agreed with the value in the NTL.  

Not applicable.

Not applicable.