The progressive spread of electric cars places a problem for the Treasury since he will go to reduce the revenue from excise duties on fuelthe. For this reason, within the Government we have begun to evaluate the possibility of transferring fuel excise duties to battery-powered cars. The confirmation comes from minister Giancarlo Giorgetti speaking at the Automotive Dealer Day.
Think about the effect electrification will have on shifting fuel excise taxes to new forms of power. And it will not just be a reduction in revenue, but a significant transfer. This is an area on which the MEF has already started working also in consideration of the updating of European legislation on the taxation of energy products.
With electrification which will lead to fewer endothermic cars (petrol and diesel) on the roads, revenues from excise duties on fuel will be reduced. For this reason we began to think about how to move for the future. One solution is precisely the one anticipated by the minister to shift excise duties towards electric cars.
To date, this is still only a reflection and it is difficult to understand how the issue will evolve over time. It was not even specified how the excise duties could be transferred but the simplest way would be to apply them to the top-up.
The hypothesis of excise duties on electric cars immediately caused a lot of discussion and there was no shortage of controversy in the political sphere with those already talking about a tax on BEVs to hinder the path towards sustainable mobility.
The reality is that today the excise taxes on fuel represent an indispensable income for the state coffers and so they will never really go away. At most they will be moved elsewhere. So if there are fewer petrol and diesel cars on the roads, excise duties will simply be shifted to electric cars in some way.
After all, upon closer inspection, this is certainly not an unexpected scenario. This topic has also been discussed among the communities for some time. So, rather than understanding whether they will arrive, the real issue is when they will arrive.
