Project Objective:
The aim of the project was to analyse the efficiency of environmental protection charges from the point of view of their administration costs and the costs for charging payers. The next goal was to define how the economic subjects change their decisions as a consequence of implementing the instruments.

Brief Summary:

The basic methodological approach was to evaluate the efficiency of environmental protection charges from the point of view of the administrative and invoked costs. A sample of the four most significant charges in the Czech Republic was chosen for the analysis it: air protection charges, water management charges, waste management charges and charges for land exempted from agriculture land resources. The qualification of the administrative costs was carried out using the converted employee method, which is used as standard to measure the administrative costs of taxation. Thus the costs incurred on the public sector and related to applying particular economic instruments necessary for an efficiency evaluation were calculated (methodology for results measurement from the Czech Science Foundation project no. 402/02/1271 “Tax policy management – measurement of administrative and invoked costs of taxation in the Czech Republic”).

The measurement of administrative costs was established by an activity analysis of public sector organizations, which administer charges collection. The activities of these organizations were divided into three groups: connected to charges collection, not directly connected to charges collection and indirect costs (e.g. housecleaning, building administration). The relations among these activities, expressed by the number of employees, served to calculate the coefficients which were necessary for dividing the costs of organization in order to enumerate the absolute value of administrative costs. The ratio of these costs to revenues of particular charges represented a percentage expression of administrative costs’ significance and thereby also the degree of efficiency. It was possible to compare the resulting values among different types of charges and also with results of foreign analyses.

In the case of invoked costs a method based on direct questioning of a selected representative sample of informants was chosen. The direct interview was used because of expected low questionnaires returns. It was realized thanks to students of Prague University of Economics and students of Olomouc Palacký University. This way of interviewing enabled particular questions to be explained and discussed with the respondents – it increased the credibility of the investigation. In the framework of researching the quantity of invoked costs the hypothesis about their regression to payer size was tested.

In the framework of the interviews the question of the relation of charges to changes in payers behaviour in relation to environmental protection was also elaborated. The hypothesis tested assumed that because of the parallel existence of direct administrative instruments (e. g. limits) the influence of charges in payers’ behaviour is neutral. The hypothesis tested was, to a large extent, the answer to the question of their environmental efficiency.

Outputs:
A seminar held on 20 December 2005 and publication “Environmental Protection Charges and their Efficiency”.