Taxpayers shelled out an additional £1.3bn in green taxes over the last year, but the government increased green tax breaks by just £130m according to research by UHY Hacker Young.

The accounting group argues that with the value of all green tax breaks being just 3.4% of all green taxes, government policy is still geared towards punished polluters rather than rewarding environmentally responsible taxpayers.

The figures revealed that in 2008-09 the government took a total of £31.9bn in green taxes, but handed back just £1,075m to environmentally friendly taxpayers. In 2007-08 the value of green taxes amounted to £30.7bn while green tax breaks were worth £945m.

“Green taxes are increasing ten times faster than green tax breaks”, said Roy Maugham, tax partner at UHY Hacker Young. “Despite this problem receiving an enormous amount of publicity in recent years, government policy is still very much all stick and very little carrot”.