Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin said he was “not in favor” of an increase in gas taxation, this Saturday October 12 on TF1, while Minister of Ecological Transition and Energy Agnès Pannier- Runacher had said the day before that the government was going to propose it via an amendment to the finance bill.
There’s some frying on the government line over energy taxes. Budget Minister Laurent Saint-Martin said he was not “not favorable” to an increase in taxation on gas, this Saturday, October 12 on TF1, while the Minister of Ecological Transition and Energy Agnès Pannier-Runacher had said the day before that the government was going to propose it via an amendment to the draft finance law.
Agnès Pannier-Runacher “said that there might be amendments on the increase in gas taxation”said Laurent Saint-Martin on Saturday. He observed that the finance bill presented this week “does not contain an increase in taxes on gas” and declared that he was not “not favorable” to this eventuality. Which would, however, allow the tax effort to be placed on energy that is more harmful to the climate than electricity, on which the government will conversely increase taxes.
Friday during a press briefing, Agnès Pannier-Runacher indicated: “the challenge is also to work on brown niches through the increase in the automobile penalty, through the elimination of the reduced VAT rate of 5.5% on the installation of fossil fuel boilers and finally through government amendment, through an increase in taxation on plane tickets and gas”. “It is important to provide consistent price signals between carbon solutions and decarbonized solutions”she had justified.
“It is especially important to prevent public policies and public money from making carbon solutions less expensive than carbon-free solutions”added Agnès Pannier-Runacher, referring in particular to the increase in taxation of electricity, essentially decarbonized in France due to the importance of nuclear power. In its finance bill presented on Thursday, the government plans to increase electricity taxation to a level that allows “guarantee the consumer a 9% reduction in the regulated sales price in 2025 from February 1”.
It is counting on the drop in electricity costs on the markets to absorb the increase in the electricity tax, which will mark the exit from the tariff shield put in place during the energy crisis from the end of 2021 to contain the bills of French.
Electricity tax “is increasing because it had fallen to zero during the inflation crisis”observed Laurent Saint-Martin on Saturday. “The State has protected our fellow citizens in the face of surges in energy prices, […] today with inflation below 2%, for our public finances, we must remove this shield if there is no more inflation”.
