For the first time since the tax cut, diesel costs more than two euros on a daily average nationwide. For Wednesday, the ADAC reported a value of 2.007 euros per liter on Thursday. That’s 1.5 cents more than the day before. The price for E10 stagnated at 1.948 euros per liter.
Diesel is almost as expensive again as it was before the tax cut since June 1, which was 16.7 cents per liter for the fuel. On Wednesday, only 3.7 cents were missing from the price of May 31st. The development is going in the absolutely wrong direction, said an ADAC spokesman. “Prices should go down, not up.”
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The tax cut was a mistake, said the President of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Marcel Fratzscher, of the German Press Agency. “Because most of the three billion euros in tax money will end up in the pockets of the oil companies.”
As a countermeasure, he suggested: “The federal government should follow the example of Italy and Great Britain and introduce an excess profit tax for oil companies.” This could “be levied on the additional sales compared to 2021 and include a 50 percent tax on additional profits.” The The government could give back savings to all citizens in the form of an energy flat rate.
Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) also spoke out in favor of the excess profit tax. “Profiting from the war is actually not the right thing to do,” he said in RTL’s “Nachtjournal Spezial”. The problem, however, is how to differentiate these profits from others. “Nevertheless, I think one should work on it, knowing that it is complicated.” However, his coalition partner and Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner had firmly rejected such a tax on Tuesday.
The former head of economics and advisor to Finance Minister Lindner, Lars Feld, told the newspaper: “It is unlikely to be constitutional. From an economic point of view, one will also have to ask whether the state will then have to compensate for excessive losses in the future. “The economics Veronika Grimm told the newspaper: “The excess profit tax should ultimately do more harm than good.” There is no clear definition of what exactly an excess profit is and which There is a danger “that companies will also be taxed that have contributed to overcoming the crises with their activities”.
On the question of why prices have not fallen to the same extent as the tax, Tomaso Duso, competition expert at the DIW, said: “The reason for this is that the refiners have market power. This is not necessarily malicious behavior, but the result of high market concentration at refineries and oil companies.” Economists had warned of this, but politicians did not want to hear it. “The tank discount is now gone.”
