Austria institutes CO2-based bonus-malus tax system for cars
Austria is also changing its taxing system to "punish" the most polluting cars on the road. The new tax scheme, which is called NoVa-Reform, consists of a bonus-malus system that saves or adds taxes to cars depending on a number of factors.
The system results more complicated than the British or the Spanish ones, which rely exclusively on CO2 emissions: Cars emitting under 140 CO2 g/km get a "bonus" or discount from the car tax (300 EUR), but you can gain an additional bonus if you use "alternative fuels and technologies" (500 EUR) or a Diesel Particulate Filter (200 EUR). The malus system starts when your car pollutes more than 180 g/km: 25 EUR for each additional gram (initial plans started the malus at 160). If you thought this was complex, there's more: total bonus cannot result in more than a 500 EUR discount and the final car tax can't be negative, although it can be offset.
Criticism has spread considerably in Austria because a family carrier like a Volkswagen Touran with a 1.4 TFSI engine ends up paying more taxes than a Lexus Hybrid.
[Source: Der Standard (link is in German)]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
GreyFlcn 7:43PM (12/08/2007)
i.e. It's a Feebate program.
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 11:23PM (12/08/2007)
In terms of family carriers, in France they are apparently increasing the CO2 levels depending on the number of children in the family - from the third child onwards they are adding 5 g CO2 to the CO2 limits, in order not to penalize larger families. Seems like a good solution.
The Irish seem to have the best of all systems up to now though: they have just introduced an "Idiot Tax" (a tax for people who buy SUVs) of 36% - now THAT'S more like it !
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Erik Unger 3:49AM (12/09/2007)
300 Euro won't change any buying decesions!
All modern small cars will get the bonus.
So it's about buying decisions between a small cars and an middle class cars which are priced very different because of their size/class. So 300 Euro won't influence even less.
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Tim 9:44AM (12/09/2007)
Co2, yet another excuse for the socialists to steal money and power.
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Karl-Uwe Strunzen 11:52PM (12/09/2007)
What do the Socialists have to do with anything?
Austria's coalition government includes the right-wing OVP. In Ireland, where the CO2 taxes are even higher, the coalition includes Fianna Fail and the PDs, who are for lower taxes.
Everyone in Europe is hiking the CO2-based taxes, regardless of their current government. It has nothing to do with Socialism, but an EU commitment towards CO2 reduction (aka Kyoto). These countries have to pay penalties if they don't respect their quotas. Besides the direct costs there are also the indirect costs. CO2 isn't strictly speaking a poison like all the other emissions. These other emissions are also drastically higher for SUVs. Assuming you don't care about people's health that much (including your own) there is a higher medical cost associated with these things, not to mention higher death tolls from road accidents.
I say everyone but indeed Germany are the only country not to have done anything. They have said that "perhaps" something shall be done in 2009:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2912535,00.html
Since everyone else has already acted for 2008, this probably means that nothing will happen in 2009 either. This is not because Germany may be more or less Socialist than others: German cars are, sector-by-sector, the worst in Europe (after the French, Italian and Japanese, in that order). In other words this all about the fear of profits going down for the German carmakers.
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