Carbon tax is one of important environmental economic instruments, targeting to internalize environmental cost, cut fossil energy consumption and carbon emission. Since the 1990’s, many countries and regions have explored to implement carbon tax. But being an instrument to intervene economy, carbon tax produces not only environmental effect, but also economic effect and distribution effect. These three effects affect each other, and the final effect involves huge uncertainty:Carbon tax brings a certain decline of carbon emissions locally while probably inducing carbon leakage. At the same time, as interfering energy prices, carbon tax may increase energy cost, hurt industrial competitiveness, resident welfare, and employment. It is not easy to achieve targets of cutting carbon emission, avoiding market distortion, realizing economic growth, and avoiding adverse effects to the poor simultaneously. Therefore, many countries implement carbon tax cautiously. Especially in recent years, when the global economy continues to slump, many countries are trying to promote manufacturing industry development and to boost their economy out of weak situation. Their enthusiasm of implementing carbon tax has declined. China is a developing country that is undergoing difficult transition period. In the context of world economic growth slowdown, the mission of growth and employment is also very heavy. Considering complexity and uncertainty of carbon tax effects, levying of carbon tax should be very cautious.%碳税是一种重要的环境经济手段，其设立初衷是将环境成本内部化，减少化石能源的消费和碳排放量。20世纪90年代以来，许多国家和地区探索实施了碳税。但作为一个干预经济运行的政策手段，碳税不仅会产生环境效应，还会产生经济效应和分配效应。这些效应互相影响，最终效果存在较大的不确定性：碳税的引入会在本国或本地区带来碳排放量的一定程度下降，但也可能引起“碳泄漏”。同时，由于碳税干扰了能源价格，可能加大能源成本，对工业生产竞争力，以及居民福利、就业等产生影响。既利用碳税实现碳减排，又要避免碳税对市场的扭曲，影响经济目标的实现，还要避免对贫困阶层的不利影响，同时达到这些目标实非易事，因此各国引入碳税前大多非常谨慎。特别是近几年，全球经济持续低迷，各国正设法推动制造业发展以提振经济走出疲软态势，对征收碳税的积极性有所下降。我国是一个发展中国家，正处于经济结构转型、多项重要改革同时推进的艰难转型期，在当前世界经济增长放缓的大背景下，保增长促就业的任务也很重，考虑到碳税三种效应的复杂性和不确定性，建议我国开征碳税应非常慎重。
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