By environmental taxes the OECD understands ‘the levies, taxes and service charges whose assessment bases are constituted by a pollutant, or more generally by a product or service which damages the environment or is translated by a levy on renewable or non-renewable natural resources.’ As for environmental taxation reform, it is distinguished by the fact that it goes along with the principle of budgetary or taxation neutrality, when the proceeds of tax revenues are recycled, more often in favour of employment, through a reduction of the tax burden weighing on it.

Tax wedge: the gap between the cost of work and the purchasing power of a salary. The percentage of the costs of labour, represented by the sum total of personal income tax, employees’ and employers’ social security contributions, and every tax on salaries.

Excise duties: indirect taxes hitting the consumption or use of certain products, be they produced within the country, whether they come from a European Union member state, or are imported from a country outside the Union.

‘Eurovignette’: a tax comparable to income tax, collected as a right to use the road network (transport of merchandise).

Duties: a deduction – practiced by the channel of the State’s authority (Regions, communities), by the provinces or the local authorities – from people’s resources, be they by law public or private, from businesses without juridical personality, bona fide organisations or community associations existing on the country’s territory, or owning interests in it, to be allocated to public utilities.

Service charge: a payment which the authority claims from certain liable entities in certain cumulative conditions of a service provided to particular people considered in isolation, with the payment of a sum which maintains a proportional link with the service provided. It involves some sort of compensation; the payment for a service.

Tax: an obligatory payment, without compensation, deducted periodically by the public authorities.

Road tax: it is established annually on steam or motor vehicles (plus trailers or semi trailers), serving as road transport for people or merchandise.

Supplementary road tax: it is deducted annually from cars, composite coaches and minibuses equipped with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) systems.

Environmental tax, ecotax: a tax whose assessment basis is the physical unit (or a ‘proxy’ of it) of a good which has a specific and proven negative impact on the environment.

A tax with environmental aims: a tax comparable to excise duties hitting a product when it is made available for sale because of the ecological damage it is said to produce.