Remodulation of excise duties equals increase in the price and spending on fuel? The dilemma emerged after rumors about a possible increase in excise duties on diesel, with the hypothesis of bringing it to the levels of petrol. The hypothesis was denied by the Minister of Economy Giancarlo Giorgetti himself who spoke only of an “alignment”, with a remodulation which “means that there will probably be a decrease in excise duties on petrol and an increase in those on diesel”, also in light of the government’s commitment to “reduce harmful environmental subsidies”.
In short, there will not be one excise duty lower than the other: the tax burden on the two types of fuel will be the same, probably at a level halfway between current values. Today, diesel has excise duties of 61.7 cents per litre, while those on petrol rise to 72.8 cents. A difference of 11 cents which suggests a halfway recovery: therefore an increase of 5.5 cents for diesel and an equal reduction for petrol.
What changes
The benefit would seem obvious for those who own a petrol-powered car: it is an increasingly higher number, judging by the registration data with diesels in sharp decline. This is confirmed by the trend in consumption in 2023 compared to 2019: last year, petrol consumption showed an increase of 11.5% compared to the pre-pandemic period while a decline of 2.1% was recorded for diesel.
Except that, despite this trend, Last year, diesel consumption was much higher than that of petrol (28 and 11 billion liters respectively). This means that raising excise duties on diesel would result in an overall higher expense of 1.55 billion euros while the cut on petrol would bring benefits of 600 million.
But the ‘damage’ for motorists would be double: in fact, not only would owners of diesel cars find themselves with higher costs for fuel, but there would be an impact on the prices of goods. Yes, because the commercial vehicles used to move goods practically all run on diesel and in the event of an increase, hauliers could only pass on the additional expense to customers.
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