Italy doubles Europe's environmental own goal on plug-in electric cars. They will be taxed as income from employment, recharging done at home or at public charging stations by those who use company electric and hybrid “plug-in” cars. Result: “mixed” cars with both thermal and electric engines, which Europe would like to exempt from the total ban on thermal engines by 2035, risk doubling their possible negative effect on the environment. Let's see why.
Europe, as already revealed by FIRSTonline, had already put in place a recipe that was completely contradictory to its environmental commitments: the possibility for an employee entrusted with a plug-in car to be reimbursed for both fuel and recharges at the bottom of the list constitutes an incentive not to carry out the supplies of electrons at the plug, which guarantee a reduction in overall consumption and related emissions, but imply some undoubted inconvenience for recharging.
The consequence? Plug-in hybrids, if not recharged regularly, can consume and therefore pollute more than corresponding cars with only a combustion engine. Europe is evidently not taking this into account, even if Brussels has yet to make a final decision. In Italy, meanwhile, there is a risk of worsening the boomerang effect.
The Revenue Agency, questioned on the new tax regime of the different types of cars entrusted to employees, has in fact cross-referenced the regulations on the matter and has established a discipline that will however have decidedly unwanted consequences.
Balancing between incentives and penalties
In order to maximize the ratio between their costs and the benefits for their employees, companies will be strongly encouraged to convert their car fleet to electric, which now provides for a taxable amount of 10% of the cost per kilometer based on a flat rate of 15 thousand kilometers per year for fully electric cars, while for plug-in hybrids the percentage rises to 20%, still a fraction of the 50% envisaged for petrol and diesel vehicles.
Electric car? The only way to make it work is to recharge it. Paying the expected income taxes, grumbling aside. Plug-in hybrid car? Employees will quickly choose this solution. Which will allow, if the discipline that is being built is confirmed, to play really dirty. Off with the petrol or diesel supplies, which will continue to be reimbursed in full by the company when (as in a large number of cases happens) the cost of the fuel is also included in the benefit. But, as is largely predictable, no refills which here in Italy are still the most expensive on the continent (with an increase also on the taxed part borne by the employee in charge) but which still allow our modern plug-in car to maximise the handover between the internal combustion engine and the electric engine, guaranteeing those real benefits on costs, consumption and therefore on pollution.
Looking for rules for the new scenario
A game with which the company driver saves himself from the additional costs to be borne. In the meantime, the company loses, because in the end it will have to bear the higher costs of the fuel of a car that will not be used to guarantee its saving virtues. And here in the meantime is the double resounding own goal for the environmental credibility of our country.
Is it the Revenue Agency's fault? More than one tax expert observes that electricity should be treated like fuel, already included in the calculation of the flat rate for taxation. Therefore, the reimbursement of the related cost should not contribute to forming income for employees. It must be said that the Agency does nothing but interpret and apply the rules generated by the Government and Parliament. Which confirm once again "an evident unawareness of the legislator towards an unknown world" observes the director of the authoritative industry magazine Quattroruote, Gian Luca Pellegrini. A change of direction is urgently needed.
