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Tomorrow, December 31, the measure will expire introduced last March by the government of Mario Draghi to lower the price of fuel through the so-called “discount on excise duties”. The budget law for 2023 does not provide for extensions of the measure: it means that unless new decisions are taken on the matter from 1 January 2023, petrol, diesel and LPG could cost 18.3 cents more per litre.
The excise duty is a tax on certain products (in this case fuel): it remains unchanged as prices increase and is included by the seller in the final price of the product. When there is an increase in prices, as happened during this year, a government can decide to decrease the excise duty to lower them: the tool for doing this is the so-called mobile excise duty, a mechanism introduced in 2008 precisely in the face of a significant oil price growth.
In essence, the measure requires the government to use the increased VAT revenue to finance a decrease in excise duties, thus curbing price increases. Last March, Draghi’s government had done just that: with the extra revenue from 500 million euros in VAT obtained from the rise in prices, it had financed the decrease in excise duties of 25 cents per liter for petrol and diesel (which includes VAT it became of 30.5 cents) and 8.5 cents per kilo for LPG (10.37 with VAT). Last November, the government led by Meloni had reduced the cut to 15 cents per liter (18.3 with VAT) for petrol and diesel, while for LPG it had gone from 8.5 to 5.1 per kilo.
In the budget law for 2023, approved yesterdaythe government maintained a series of measures to contain the effects of energy price increases, but did not include the excise duty discount. For a full tank of 50 litres, the total elimination of the discount on excise duties will lead to an increase of about 9 euros per tank.
