Amie06

Is the UK tax on gas/petrol a % of price at the pump? If it is, then surely the revenue from gas/petrol tax will fall causing a drop in government income?

scrubbedexpat099

Partly. But not mainly.

Mr Weeze

Duty is a fixed amount, VAT is a % of the price.

The Price of Fuel - PetrolPrices.com

Michael

Not sure of the current tax in the UK but in in March 2011, the petrol tax was £0.5795 per liter plus a 20% VAT tax.

When petrol prices fall, the UK government gets the same amount per litter from the petrol tax but less from the VAT tax which is levied on both the petrol and the petrol tax.

The US levies both federal and state taxes on gasoline but states with a sales tax also levy the sales tax on top of everything so state revenue can be lost from the sales tax if cost of gasoline drops.

Guindalf

I didn't know gas was capable of having a litter!

You learn something every day.

Pulaski

Thanks to BP's double discount on the 22nd of each month, I paid $2.18 on Saturday. ...... Not $2.18 a gallon, I paid $2.18 for the whole 20 gallon fill-up!

Beaverstate

In Venezuela that would be 6 cents per gallon, no discounts however

amideislas

Seen a few cents downward movement over here in past few months, but it's not a huge fall.

Still it's the lowest I've seen in maybe 2 years. so let's calculate:

1 US gallon = 3.78541 Liters.
1 Euro = 1.24 USD.

Average petrol price in Spain is around €1.38 per liter (including 21% VAT), x 3.78541 liters per gallon
= €5.22 (Euros) per gallon.

x 1.24 (value of EUR/USD)
= $6.47 USD per gallon paid at the pump in Spain

...and Spain has amongst the lowest priced petrol of the larger Eurozone members. Germany is still in the €1.50's range.

Count your blessings. I reckon we'll never pay less than the equivalent of $5 per gallon, even if OPEC decided to give it away for free. Tax revenue will always trump economic relief here, and that explains a little about Europe's inability to come to grips with it's economy.

SultanOfSwing

Even worse in the UK - a quick from-memory calculation showed they are paying in the low $8.00/gal range there

I'm guilty of it myself, the complaining when it gets over $4.00/gal over here, I have to remind myself about the cost in Europe to help get over it.

$2.83/gal in town yesterday, which was nice. We'll be in Wisconsin for Thanksgiving, it'll be interesting to see how much cheaper it is up there, usually it's 10-20c cheaper than here.

Michael

Some European countries get nearly 25% of it's revenues for the taxes levied on gas. In the US, the federal government gets a little more than 1% of it's tax revenues from the gas tax. Although the average gas tax is only about $0.23 per gallon (federal and state), states can get up to double the $0.18 per gallon that the federal government gets after a state sales tax is added.

amideislas

I'm told that European taxation on petrol, including VAT, equates to more like 60-75%.

Pulaski

I'd heard 75%-80%, but Michael is talking about percentage of government revenue, not percentage of the price of gas. I had never heard that some governments might be getting a quarter of there revenue from taxing fuel.

That is scary, but doesn't surprise me; it is going to be difficult for those countries to transition to alternative fuels because such a transition would have to be matched by punitive taxes on electric vehicles or other alternatives, which is the exact opposite of what is happening in the US where governments are much less dependant on fuel taxes and have been giving tax incentives to buy electric and hybrid vehicles.

Yorkieabroad

2.38 at our local HEB this afternoon.

amideislas

We are indeed very dependent on those revenues. (I'd argue that we simply spend much too much on things that we don't need, but that's another rant).

But it's true that tax incentives for renewables have been all but eliminated, and are conspicuously absent from the political landscape nowadays. But then, "tax relief" is also conspicuously absent from any political discussion.

For example, Germany, in its quest to become more "green" (a very popular theme with Germans) has decommissioned all nukes in favour of highly taxable fossil fuels (e.g. Russian gas and coal). But actually, much of their energy is now purchased from France, who has a surplus of because of their many nuke plants.

Spain's latest forward-thinking genius is to heavily tax any type of off-grid self-generated energy (e.g., solar, wind) Supposedly, that will help cover the deficits from the subsidies paid to energy companies to keep energy costs low for Spanish consumers, who ironically, are amongst the most profitable whilst Spanish consumers pay some of the highest energy costs in the world (much of it in tax, naturally).

Like I said, the pursuit of tax revenue will always trump economic relief (or common sense).

Michael

I once saw that figure but that does sound high. Possibly that figure was for some poorer counties (possibly eastern European countries). The UK gets about 7% of it's tax revenue from the petrol tax plus vehicle registration but that doesn't include the VAT tax on petrol. When a country like Turkey pays about PPP$14 per liter and most of the cost is taxes, it's not hard to imagine that it could be one of those countries if there are enough drivers. Before anyone says anything, I know that Turkey is not part of Europe.