Car owners want to impose a “new” environmental tax.
Recently the Minister of ecology and natural resources of Ukraine Ostap Semerak stated on the need to return environmental tax on vehicles that are the greatest polluters of the environment.
According to him, the so-called “fuel tax” has been successful in the countries of the European Union, where it proceeds quite high and are subject to various types of engines and fuel. “I consider it appropriate to revisit the issue of broadening the base for environmental taxation due to the payment of such tax on transport,” he explained.
According to the Minister, about 80% of air pollution in the average Ukrainian cities is pollution from transport, private and municipal.
Director of information-analytical group AUTO-Consulting Oleg Omelnitsky said that such an initiative is fraught with many dangers for motorists. This is an additional exaction to the vehicle, which does not carry the structural elements. In Ukraine and some of the highest prices for used cars in Europe, which provoked a wave of uncleared import cars from neighbouring countries through a variety of schemes.
“After one more tax on the car even less arguments will clear it and put it on the record in Ukraine”, – says Omelnitsky.
Practice shows that in Europe selling cheap cars for the simple reason than you older the car the more you pay environmental taxes in different forms, the Director for marketing of group of companies AIS Sergey Borovik. For example, in Germany, there is an annual environmental tax. Than the car is older, the more the owner pays for it depending on the type and volume of the engine.
“That is, if you have some generous old diesel, you will pay for it in the year of a fixed amount of the environmental tax, regardless of, you operate it or not. And it is, including determining why people do not exploit old cars and try to sell them” – explains Borovik. – “Plus, after all the cost of maintenance and repair many times more expensive than in Ukraine.”
In addition, the environmental tax is fraught with another danger. With the help of it the Cabinet will “survive” from the market of old cars, says Omelnytskiy. Perhaps it will not be now, but in the second, the third year of its action, but it definitely will be. But if other countries were offered the program of recycling of old cars, compensation to the owners, who wished to donate old cars into scrap metal, there is a risk that the Ukrainian interpretation of owners of old cars just “crush” a high tax rate, making their operation unprofitable.
It should be noted that vehicles in Ukraine, were exempted from the environmental tax in 2015.
According to the Minister, in the budget last year received more than 4.2 billion UAH from the environmental tax. The largest payers are enterprises of metallurgical, mining, processing, housing and communal services and fuel and energy complex.
At the same time, he noted, compared to 2014 and 2015 income significantly, and 75% of the tax it receives for the emissions of harmful substances into the atmospheric air.
According to Borovik, before this tax was very insignificant and “sitting” in the tax on fuel.
Omelnitsky recalls that when registering a vehicle Ukrainians pay: contributions to the Pension Fund, with customs clearance shall pay the excise tax, duty and VAT. “Plus, every liter of fuel sold in Ukraine is paid and transportation fee, which, in fact, includes not only a tax on infrastructure, and environmental components,” he says.
In the first place, according to Borovik, it would be advisable to introduce for commercial vehicles, trucks and buses. In fact, they are the greatest polluters of the environment.
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