4x4 pollution tax to become annual

High polluting cars will be taxed yearly under new proposals.

The malus (surcharge) part of the government’s bonus/malus scheme, which uses a one-off tax on the purchase of high polluting cars to subsidise the price of greener models, is to become annual, while the bonus/malus concept is to be extended to a range of products.

Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said the scheme is to be extended to 20 “large consumer product families” by the end of the year.

This follows the announcement that the bonus/malus scheme, which was meant to cost the state nothing, with the charges and payments cancelling each other out, will cost €200 million this year.

A spokeswoman for the minister said it was expected these measures would be included in the finance bill which would be debated by parliament in the autumn, probably October.

“We do not yet know exactly which ‘families’ are concerned, but, for example, one could be electrical household goods – but within that only certain products would be concerned,” she said.

Mr Borloo has called the idea “a revolution” which will help to “impose the right ecological price.”

The spokeswoman added the details of how the scheme would work had yet to be clarified, but the likely effect for the consumer would be simply that the ‘greener’ products would now have a lower price tag than now and the more polluting ones would cost more.

“The bonus/malus idea has been successful in Austria, for example. The aim is to economise resources and decrease production of polluting greenhouse gas.”

Photo: flickr/ aeu04117/Murray Barnes