International fleet guide 2009

In these turbulent times in which predicting the future of the automotive industry poses no easy challenge, the focus is most probably not on car taxation. But, understanding car taxation rules and the mechanics behind them, especially the impact of changes on the market, may help prompt measures to revive sales and counteract the automotive industry’s other challenges in the form of global warming and limited reserves of fossil fuels.

It is clear that car taxation is a good tool for influencing consumer behaviour, whether to get fleets to use low-CO2 cars (as in the Netherlands and the UK) or as an incentive for private individuals (such as scrapping premiums in Germany).

The time has come for regulators to get Member States to understand best practices in car taxation and how change may result in the modernisation of the European car fleet and make it the most advanced in the world. Excluding the emerging markets of the CEE from this analysis and economic potential boost is not an option.

Fleet Europe and PricewaterhouseCoopers have therefore updated this guide for 12 CEE countries (including Russia and Turkey) and mapped the tax rules on the whole range of car use and leasing. This 2009 edition therefore geographically supplements our 2008 edition, which focused on the western European countries.