The parliament has approved on den 7. Mai 2008 the amendment of law number 16/1993 Sb., about the road tax, in the wording of later regulations. The amendment must be approved also by the senate and the president. The important change is § 3 Tax exemption, paragraph f). Until now it contained only vehicles with electrical propulsion. According to the approved amendment it has the new wording: vehicles for passenger transport or vehicles for cargo transport with the highest allowed weight less than 12 tons, which have electric propulsion, have hybrid propulsion combining combustion engine and electric engine, use as fuel liquified petroleum gas marked as LPG or compressed natural gas marked as CNG, or are equipped by the engine dedicated by the manufacturer to combust automobile petrol and ethanol 85 marked as E85.
The road tax must be paid for all vehicles registered as used for business, or all above 12 tons, except of the exemptions in § 3.
What to add? Not mentioning the incorrect word "ethanol" instead of proper Czech word as well as chemical name "etanol", the law is interesting by the fact, that it gives the advantage only to certain propulsion types. There are definitely more of those which could be marked as ecological. So it seems, that the goal is rather to support certain lobby instead of real ecological propulsion support. It can be seen for example in the very distorting article published at iDnes, which sounds as there is the only possibility in alternative fuels, which is CNG. From its intentionally confusing explanation many readers understood, that the zero tax does not involve LPG, which is not true. Of course, CNG is an interesting alternative, but the opponents claim, that for example the in fact monopoly natural gas distributor to the Czech is German RWE Transgas and it would be good to support also other directions and thus build really competitive environment with equal chances for everyone, who can offer a suitable alternative. Such a law to be correct should describe general conditions necessary to fit the tax deduction and not to mention specific products of in fact definite companies, which are allowed to get the exemption.
Links
|