Monday, July 7, 2014

The New Maut or Autobahn Tax Concept

The entire new concept for Maut (autobahn tax) will be released today here in Germany.  There were several pieces of the concept released yesterday.....so most of what is said today won't shock anyone.

Up until fifteen years ago....Maut didn't exist....then came the trucking experiment where electronic collectors were installed, and folks were charged for usage on the autobahn.  Ever since that point....there's been this chatter over the idea of making foreigners going through Germany pay something.  The election last year brought this idea to the top of the public's interest, and it's been under a planning stage ever since.

The present idea....spoken via several folks yesterday.....is that you'd have a decal for your window if you were a non-German vehicle....and there would be a tax on that vehicle to get the decal.  The surprise is that it would not be a standard deal.....like 100 Euro for a yearly decal as some discussed over the past couple of months.

The new idea is that the type of emissions that the vehicle put out.....would figure into this, and the engine size as well.  All of this would mean that you might pay as little as 20 Euro.....or as much as 150 Euro.

The hostility brewing here?  Not from within Germany.....it's probably a eighty-percent approval rate for some type of taxation on foreign usage of German highways right now.  But the Dutch, the French, the Austrians, and the Italians.....they are fairly unhappy about this.  To them.....utilizing this system will simply add onto the bill of transiting Germany. They've all promised to sue in court and take this up the EU chain.

I suspect that the method of taxation fixed into this system.....owes itself to the court issues....and they think that most courts will admit that fairness was designed with the environmental view of things.

What may happen?  The EU court system might step in.....to order a suspension of the autobahn Maut once this passes via the Bundestag.  A one-year review might stall it.....but I suspect that they will admit that it's fair and folks need to get used to doing it.  I might add.....it probably will not deliver the amount of capital that people think, and this might only be stage one.....of a four-stage affair.

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