No tax will be launched in the next period, but when we come up with a formula it must be realistic, based on the principle ‘the polluter pays’, Environment Minister Gratiela Gavrilescu has said on Thursday.
“The working group has not yet finalized its point of view (…), we want the value to be based on a calculation formula from which the citizen understands something, not to be a calculation formula from which even mathematicians fail to understand,” the minister said, hotnews.ro reports.
The reaction comes as recently, the media announced a new car registration tax looming. Information said that the new 2018 car tax will most likely come into force in early summer, and will be paid once at the first car registration. The tax would be between EUR 50 and EUR 3,000 depending on the pollution norm. The current calculation formula would be applied for 3 years, after which it will be replaced by a progressive tax paid by all car owners, similar to the German legislation, public television TVR informs.
The same source read that for the calculation, the pollution and carbon dioxide emissions will be considered, this being the current variant, according to the quoted source.
The Environment Minister said none of the news released about an alleged car tax is true.
“The rumours on Wednesday in the media are not true, and neither of these values is true. We did not even think about them, because so far I say we’d better not hurry, but we do things slowly and surely for a number of years so that we can take care of the health of the population and the environment will not be polluted. I tell all the Romanians that it is not about any kind of environmental tax, it’s simply speculations,” Minister Gratiela Gavrilescu said on Thursday.
The old car tax was calculated on the basis of the pollution norm and the year of manufacture, plus the cylinder capacity. Its removal had an immediate impact. We have the oldest car park in the history of the measurements made in the past 10 years in Romania. The average age of cars is 13 years old, and in 2007 it was just 8 years old.
On February 1, 2017 the car tax was cancelled and no less than 350,000 second hand cars have been registered since, most of them Euro 2 and Euro 3.
The ‘scrap car’ programme has been extended until the end of the year and supplemented by 4,000 vouchers. It has a speed, in terms of auto park renewal, of 25,000 cars per year, 20 times lower than the speed of pollution with second hand cars brought from the western countries.
Sales of motor vehicles and motorcycles, down by 21.5pc in January
The turnover volume in trade of motor vehicles and motorcycles decreased in January by 21.5%, as gross series, and by 3.6% as adjusted series, against the previous month, mainly as a result of the trade of vehicles and spare parts and accessories for motor vehicles, the National Statistics Institute (INS) informs on Thursday.
INS also informs that, as compared to the similar month last year, the turnover for trade of motor vehicles and motorcycles, has increased as gross series and as seasonally adjusted series by 13.1% each.