Relief at the pump
The decision has been made: the government’s planned increase in excise duties on fuel as of January 1, 2024 has been canceled. A majority in the House of Representatives has blocked this.
In recent days, a majority in Parliament has already signed up to scrap the excise tax increase and it has just been voted on in the House of Representatives. VVD faction leader Sophie Hermans made a proposal not to implement the increase and this was supported by BBB, PVV, SP, ChristenUnie, SGP, JA21, Denk, Pieter Omtzigt and Liane den Haan.
That is undoubtedly a relief for many people with fuel cars, but it doesn’t stop there. The proposal also included maintaining the current excise duty discount for another year, from January 1. So there will be no increase in excise duties on fuel until at least January 1, 2025.
To finance this – the excise measure costs an estimated 1.2 billion euros – the parties want to raise money that will remain on the shelf at various ministries. The budgets of Social Affairs and Public Health remain untouched. Any additional natural gas revenues must also be used for this purpose. If that does not yield sufficient results, the parties want to make use of the National Growth Fund. This is actually intended to help innovative companies with investments that they would otherwise not be able to finance and that contribute to the future earning capacity of the economy.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl