July 1 is a step up
In less than a month, on Saturday 1 July, half of last year’s excise duty cut on fuel will be reversed, including an inflation adjustment. Subsequently, a second increase would follow on 1 January, but it does not seem to have been set in stone yet.
Last year, fuel excise duty was cut to dampen the enormous price increases at the pump. As a result, petrol became 17 cents cheaper per litre, while diesel dropped by 11 cents. The government has decided that prices now allow it to reverse part of the excise duty reduction. Half of the reduction will be cut off on 1 July, but there will be an inflation correction on top of the excise duty. In practice, this would raise the petrol price by about 13.8 cents, and the diesel price will rise by 9.9 cents as a result. This means that you are almost back to square one, but there is a further excise increase in the pipeline from January 2024. Then the second half of the reduction will be canceled and another inflation correction will follow. In April we already calculated that petrol would then become a total of 22.5 cents more expensive than it is now and diesel 15.5 cents.
That is quite a step in a short time. The government has now indicated that it may consider this increase to be a bit too far. In conversation with RTL Z State Secretary Marnix van Rij of Finance states that the increase as of 1 January 2024 has not yet been determined. The cabinet wants to ‘take a good look at how the flag is hanging in the autumn’. According to Van Rij, the difference with the prices in our neighboring countries is then examined, ‘because you don’t want to differ too much’. The government seems to want to prevent motorists from filling up abroad en masse by then. According to Van Rij, there are two options on the table: retaining the remaining part of the excise duty reduction, or scrapping the inflation adjustment.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl