The high level of nitrogen emissions over the last decades and their adverse impact on the natural environment and human health are a pressing environmental issue. A nitrogen tax can be a cost-efficient and effective policy instrument to reduce nitrogen emissions. However, adverse effects on low- and middle-income households might lead to societal and political frictions that could end up in resistance. In this paper we investigate how a hypothetical nitrogen tax covering the specific external costs of nitrogen could be implemented and estimate its short-term distributional effects on household income groups in Germany. The findings show that the proposed tax would be regressive. However, if the tax rate is set equal to the true cost of nitrogen, the monetary impacts would overall be small, ranging from 1.15% of income for the first income quintile to 0.66% for the fifth. Complementary policy measures to lower the burden on low-income households, farmers and the energy sector could preempt social resistance against the tax.

过去几十年的高水平氮排放及其对自然环境和人类健康的不利影响是一个紧迫的环境问题。氮税可以成为减少氮排放的一种具有成本效益且有效的政策工具。然而，对低收入和中等收入家庭的不利影响可能会导致社会和政治摩擦，最终可能导致抵制。在本文中，我们研究了如何实施涵盖氮的特定外部成本的假设氮税，并估计其对德国家庭收入群体的短期分配影响。调查结果表明，拟议的税收将是累退的。然而，如果税率设置为等于氮的真实成本，货币影响总体上会很小，范围从 1. 第一个收入五分位数占收入的 15%，第五个收入占收入的 0.66%。减轻低收入家庭、农民和能源部门负担的配套政策措施可以先发制人地抵制社会对税收的抵制。