View source for We Need Clean Company Tax Benefits for Personal Manufacturing



=Discussion=

Adrian Bowyer:

“One of the potential advantages of home
fabbing is the massive reduction in goods
transport that would be consequent on
people's making lots of stuff for themselves,
with all the greenhouse gas savings that
that implies. Well, for energy itself we now
have feed-in tariff laws, which oblige utilities
to pay a fixed price for home-generated
green electricity. This costs government
nothing, as the utilities pass the charges on
to their other customers. Dirty energy users
are paying a premium, which is then used to
reward clean generators. By analogy, one
can imagine changes in, say, sales tax laws
that would increase the cost of finished
goods, but reduce that of raw materials used
by personal fabricators. This would be
revenue-neutral for government, but would
encourage the use of the technology with
consequent transport savings.”


Hod Lipson & Melba Kurman:

"Companies that use personal manufacturing
technologies deserve competitive advantage for
their eco-friendliness. Personal manufacturing
keeps production regional, but also is less
polluting than traditional mass manufacturing
methods. Personal-scale manufacturing
technologies offer a more precise form of
manufacturing that leaves less toxic waste and
manufacturing scrap by product. As a result,
personal fabrication technologies provide a
natural vehicle with which to experiment with
local, recycled, or novel materials.
More research is needed to pinpoint the optimal
criteria for “clean company” tax advantages.


Examples of possible criteria would be to offer advantages to manufacturing
companies that:

* Use a certain percentage of raw material from their local region
* Use a certain percentage of raw manufacturing materials are of re-used waste materials
* Produce few than a certain number of tons of waste per year
* Emit a certain amount of exhaust into the air or nearby groundwater."
(http://web.mae.cornell.edu/lipson/FactoryAtHome.pdf)


[[Category:Manufacturing]]

[[Category:Policy]]

[[Category:Taxation]]

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