Minister of Finance, Andrej Šircelj, and his ministry, have sent a new legislative proposal for the Motor Vehicles Act to the government. The proposal is based on the January tax, when the Minister of Finance was Andrej Bertoncelj from the government of Marjan Šarec, but this time, the taxation is even lower. Taxation that is based on engine power has disappeared from the proposal, and the so-called luxury tax from 2012 has also been completely abolished. The new tax proposal therefore greatly values the cars themselves.
According to the new proposal, all vehicles should be subject to a certain uniform tax, which would also renew the scale for assessing the tax. The legislative proposal, which is also supposed to simplify the procedures for buying vehicles, was first published by the ministry in mid-January, and since then, some corrections were added. Večer reported that the government is expected to speed up the process of adopting the new legislative proposal, as the transitional period expires at the end of December, during which two different test procedures will be in place to measure carbon dioxide emissions and fuel consumption. If the government did not accept the changes, the price of all vehicles would increase due to the new measurement procedure.
From January, only the new methodology will apply, which could mean unequal treatment of vehicles in their taxation. The new Act will thus include a tax assessment scale, which takes the new method of measuring carbon dioxide emissions for new vehicles into account. The tax will be calculated according to carbon dioxide emissions, fuel type and the euro emission standard. The ministry received some comments, as the law provided for a reduction of tax on higher-class vehicles, and taxation on the lower-middle-class vehicles would increase, as confirmed by the estimates prepared by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Slovenia. At the beginning of the year, they calculated that the tax on the best-selling new passenger cars would increase by an average of 12 percent. The ministry has obviously taken the allegations into account, so the new proposal is not only tax-neutral, Finance writes, but is even negative and will bring a deficit of 28 million euros. The differences in the taxation of petrol and diesel vehicles are also much smaller this time than they were in the January proposal. The calculation of the motor vehicle tax will now be divided into three parts, namely the emission-related duty, the engine power-related levy and the euro-based levy.
According to the current Motor Vehicles Tax Act, car taxation is somewhere between 0.5 and 28 percent, but according to the new proposal, the calculation will be different, from the percentage tied to the value of the car, moving to fixed amounts. Thus, for fuel-efficient vehicles with emissions below 100 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, the mark-up on petrol cars will only be 20 euros, and on diesel cars, it will be 25 euros. In the class where we find the most cars, the mark-up on the purchase price of the car will be 48 euros or in the case of diesel 57 euros. For each gram over 140 grams exceeded, another five or six euros will be added. For petrol and diesel engines, an additional tax is charged, which is linked to environmental regulations. For used vehicles up to Euro 4, the mark-up is 500 euros (petrol) or 750 euros (diesel). For the cleanest vehicles, the surcharge is 15 or 25 euros.
Luxury cars will become much cheaper, and there will be virtually no reason to register a car abroad
For used cars, the tax will be reduced by about nine percent each year, which means that for a one-year-old car one will have to pay 91 percent of the Motor Vehicles Tax, and for a six-year-old car, the price will be lower for more than a half. The new law does not provide for the complete abolition of taxation of electric vehicles, but the level of taxation here is low and is based solely on engine power. According to the new law, exceptions still remain; families with at least three children are exempt from paying tax, the same applies to vehicles used to transport disabled people and diplomatic vehicles.
Sara Bertoncelj