Penalties for new and used cars, the government wants to increase everything

Expect to pay a bigger penalty in the future if you register an imported second-hand Audi RS 3 in France that has been driven little.

The government is still working on the finance law for the year 2025 with the deputies in the National Assembly. Its plan for a maximum ecological penalty increased to €60,000 next year (and the trigger threshold lowered by 5 g/km) was rejected by the deputies, even if it does not seem to be excluded from the negotiations in the development of this new budget with difficult discussions.

The outlines of the evolution of taxes reserved for cars equipped with a thermal engine and devoid of a heavy hybridization system are in any case sending shivers down the spine for those who were planning to soon buy a new vehicle of this type. According to the planned schedule, the penalty must end up being triggered as soon as 99 g/km in 2027 (106 g/km in 2026 and 113 g/km in 2025) and reach 90 000€ for “big” thermal engines that year. The “mass” penalty must be triggered from 1,500 kg on the scale from 2026 and only exempt “environmentally efficient” vehicles.

A retroactive penalty for used cars

The government is also planning, from 2026, a retroactive penalty which “will apply to the registration of any vehicle which has not been subject to the penalty on first registration”. It targets used vehicles whose first registration was made in 2015 or later and which escaped the penalty during this first registration.for example those of owners who bought a thermal vehicle exempt from the penalty thanks to a disability card who would resell their car to someone who does not benefit from the same exemption. Or maybe even an owner who escaped the penalty thanks to his three children who resells his car to a single couple? The precise terms will be known by the end of 2024.

The table of decreasing CO2 penalty per year planned for 2025.

The project also plans to spread from 2025 the rebate of the ecological penalty over the last fifteen years of a used vehicle imported and registered for the first time in France and no longer just ten years as is currently the case. Then to subtract a reduction of this penalty (from 2027) if the vehicle has traveled more than 20,000 kilometers per year on average. Here again, the aim is to penalize second-hand vehicles registered for the first time in France more heavily and for a longer period of time while also catching up with those who have escaped the penalty for other reasons, but still making a “gesture”. for cars that have been driven a lot.

Obviously, these measures could never be applied if the government were to be overthrown by a motion of censure in the National Assembly…