Greenpeace demands a “bonus-malus system” in traffic from the traffic light coalition

The Environmental Organization Greenpeace requires no less than a new tax policy from the emerging traffic light coalition to demonstrably improve the climate balance in car traffic. To do this, one could rely on a registration tax based on CO2 emissions and a fundamental change in the rules for company cars, as a paper published on Friday shows.

Greenpeace considers this necessary because there is a lot to catch up on. “Traffic, for example, has not made any headway in terms of climate protection in the past three decades. Now the emissions have to go down all the faster. According to the Climate Protection Act, they should be almost halved by 2030,” the environmental organization continued. The proposals made refer to neighboring European countries. “For example to Denmark, where a sensitive one-time new registration tax is due, especially for large, fuel-intensive cars. Or in the Netherlands, where taxation of company cars has a clear ecological steering effect.”Incidentally, this type of tax is advocated by the majority of citizens, such as a representative survey, by Yougov commissioned by Greenpeace,.

Greenpeace proposes the introduction of a CO2-oriented tax for newly registered cars. From their point of view, this is to be understood as an additional steering instrument or as part of the applicable motor vehicle tax. Vehicles should be taxed once when first registered according to their CO2 emissions per kilometer. Locally emission-free vehicles such as electric cars would be exempt from this, economical vehicles would be taxed at a low rate and vehicles that are particularly harmful to the climate would be heavily taxed. As a result, one achieves a significantly stronger steering effect in the direction of environmentally friendly vehicles when buying such a vehicle. Thus, the increase in the price of heavy and large combustion engines, together with the purchase premium for e-cars, could accelerate the switch to less climate-damaging cars.

“Low-income households buy used cars far more often than new cars. Progressive new regulatory tax can increase sales of E-cars quickly, so they come in the following years faster and in larger numbers in the used car market.”- Greenpeace

Furthermore, the environmental organization stimulates that company car taxation is covered in Germany. More than 60 percent of new cars are commercially approved in Germany, many of them are used as individual company cars for private rides, so the knowledge of Greenpeace. From the high proportion of commercial vehicles on the new registrations, the company car taxation has a high impact on the composition and CO2 intensity of the new car fleet. Because due to a mostly low holding period, company cars are considerably determining the offer on the used car market.

“In the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, the taxation of privately used company cars is staggered much stronger according to the CO2 emissions. For example, with battery-electric vehicles in UK, only about 1 percent of the list price will be taxed as a monetary advantage, but for cars with internal combustion engines, on the other hand, 16 to 37 percent.”Significant differences, which also have a corresponding steering effect. If you look at Germany, it turns out that the difference between the types of drives and the tax rate for burners is significantly lower (12 percent for combustions, 4 percent with E-cars).

“Greenpeace therefore calls for Germany that company car will be equivalent to a private car taxable in the future. The private use of the company car would thereby lose attractiveness. The acquisition of tank costs should be taxed as a monetary advantage. In addition, an enhanced CO2 component should be integrated into taxation to give an incentive to the purchase of low-emission drives.”- Greenpeace

From the environmental organization’s point of view, the traffic light coalition has two levers that could be used to direct the sales of e-cars and combustions accordingly. Because the regulation via the two levers creates a “bonus-malus system” that favors environmentally friendly e-vehicles and penalizes the use of combustion engines.

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