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Soon, Cars in Denmark Will Only Be Taxed at 100% (2017)
- therealgimli 9y agoAs an urban dweller (nyc) who would love to see fewer autos on the road, I view this as a positive development. But I can't help but wonder if there is an automakers lobby in Denmark. If so, why wouldn't they oppose/ shutdown such a measure? I can only imagine the insane backlash a similar ruling would have in the US, in spite of the long term benefits to society from having fewer cars. [edit: should have read the article in full before commenting-- I see now it is about _lowering_ the tax rate]
- DiNovi 9y agopsst, the tax is being lowered from 180% to 100%
- acchow 9y agoI think you have this backwards. They are lowering the tax from 180% to 100%.
- ChrisClark 9y agoThis is the other way around, they are lowering the tax from 180% to 100%. So I'm sure if there is an automakers lobby, they approve of this.
- alkonaut 9y agoThere are no auto makers in denmark, so likely not much of a lobby (this is Northern Europe, so “lobby” is more likely to mean unions of the manufacturers than lobbyists paid by multinational corporations).
- nicolashahn 9y agoIt might not have an insane backlash once public transit is a viable option in more than 5% of the US. Not going to happen any time soon by the looks of it, though.
- nanl2053 9y agoThe article is about lowering the tax not raising it...
- hkon 9y agoThis assumption shows how insane the taxes are
- ceejayoz 9y agoAlternatively, it may reflect a non-insane accounting for the externalities of personal car-based transport.
- charlesdm 9y agoNow, I don't live in Denmark, but am I the only one here who wouldn't like (excessive) tax policies like that? A 180% tax (now to be lowered a bit) on a vehicle seems madly excessive. It's like a ban, without actually having the guts to call it a ban. I'm assuming most normal people are unable to afford a car then. I'm not a car nut (don't even really like cars, though I do own one and don't use it often) but wouldn't want to live in a country with that line of thinking. The same applies to alcohol etc. Let people be free to decide and do what they want to do.
- Zekio 9y agoPeople tend to buy cars with loans or with monthly payments
- tabeth 9y agoPeople can still drive, though. Are you against taxes in general?
- bearcobra 9y agoI don't really see a problem with using taxation as a mechanism to encourage behavior while still allowing a market for it. Alcohol has a lot of negative impacts for society, so making it a luxury is probably a net good. I think the arguments around cars are a little more nuanced, but if a country decides it wants to encourage public transit & walkability, that seems like a fine goal.
- mc32 9y agoFor one problem it's a regressive tax, unless they carve out means based exceptions that means it puts transit for some rural people out of reach.
- FullyFunctional 9y agoExactly this. And they didn't compensate, which makes this very biased and unfair.
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- mortenjorck 9y agoI was quite surprised to click through and read that this is a decrease and not an increase in the tax rate on cars. Which makes me wonder: What about the Danish political climate enabled the original 180% rate to make it into law?
- pedermoeller 9y agoThe fact that Denmark does not have a car industry has played an important role.
- alkonaut 9y agoThis is a very big reason. Sweden and Germany have auto industry with very strong (politically) unions, ensuring that laws and taxes are beneficial to national industry. Norway and Denmark are very similar to Sweden in many ways, but only Sweden has auto industry and Norway/Denmark have much higher car prices.
- martinmunk 9y agoHad to check up on Wikipedia. It was set to 180% in 1977, with no real reason. I'm pretty sure it was meant as temporary. But yeah the fact that we have no real lobby apart from dealers and the car owners association. That and the fact that quite a lot of people hate cars. Being from the rural parts of Denmark where cars are a nessesity and moving to the second biggest city in the contry was quite a shock to me. The 180% tax is not that big a mystery to me any more. I don't talk taxes with many of my old dorm friends as they simply can't see the need to lower it. But that is easy to say when they live within biking distance of everything they need. I still see them. At least when they need a car for moving.
- charlesdm 9y agoShould charge them a moving fee, with a 180% tax on top. :)
- olivermarks 9y agoTLDR Registration duties of up to 180 percent mean Denmark is one of the most expensive countries in which to buy a new car. Proposal to lower tax rate to just 100 percent. Currently a Porsche 911 Carrera sports car is $306,600 versus $117,900 in Germany. "We will still have some of the highest car prices," Economy Minister Simon Emil Ammitzboll told a press conference in Copenhagen on Tuesday. At the same time, it’s "not fair that we, living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, are driving worse cars than our neighbors in Sweden and Germany."
- expertentipp 9y agoI just derive some perverted pleasure from seeing Scandinavians hitting themselves in the name of their self-righteousness.
- dang 9y agoNationalistic swipes will get you banned here. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.
- ansgri 9y agoI understand the viewpoint that less cars = better cities. But worse cars? Because this heavily penalizes buying better cars. I understand the need to segment the tax burden by income level, but it seems reasonable to make the maximum tax level so that, e.g. you pay flat €50k in taxes if your car costs more than €50k. You can play even the safety card here: more expensive cars have more advanced automation and safety features, so their use should be encouraged.
- ucaetano 9y ago> you pay flat €50k in taxes if your car costs more than €50k. That would be the same as capping income tax: you pay a 20% rate up to $100k of taxes, after that, no incremental taxes. It's the opposite of progressive, actually taxing rich people less than poor people. I'd even go and propose that cars over €50k should be taxed at a higher marginal tax rate than lower-priced cars.
- ansgri 9y agoWell, to extract welfare funding from rich people you already have income taxes (maybe even progressive), why exactly does one want to encourage a low-quality lifestyle?
- ucaetano 9y agoBecause expensive cars are luxury goods with negative externalities.
- khedoros1 9y agoWhich externalities does an expensive car have that a cheap one doesn't?
- ucaetano 9y agoLarger size, larger engine, more natural resources required (and more pollution). Also, not only you need to account for the negative externalities, but you also need to provide a disincentive for purchase, which then needs to be progressive due to the decreasing marginal personal utility.
- martin_bech 9y agoThis is an article from this summer. The negotiations ended at a tax rate of 85% for cars priced up to 185.000 DKK about 30.000USD. And 150% tax for the rest. There are som deductions for safety ratings, mileage etc. but these are now the current taxrates for cars. Beware before the car tax, the cars are subject to 25% sales tax. So expensive cars are +25% + 150%. (it used to be even worse)
- reaperducer 9y agoOnce you pay that tax at purchase, is there also annual registration fees? A few of the American states I've lived in have charged annual taxes based on a car's worth (decreasing over time). I hope you don't get nailed every year!
- colde 9y agoYeah, there are an annual registration fee as well. Spread over to payments a year. It isn't much though, and it depends on how environmentally friendly your car is. I think the lowest rate is approx 200 USD pr. year.
- andys627 9y ago> Isn't much... $200/yr. For comparison: California $83/yr. Nevada $33/yr.
- iddan 9y agoIn Israel they do this without any good reason.
- Zekio 9y agomake cars cheaper without any good reason? after all they are decreasing the taxes
- martinmunk 9y agoSome additional information: The yearly tax on cars are heavily affected by the milage of the car and ranges from $40/y for cars above 75mpg to $5260/y for cars below 12mpg (diesel figures)
- lumberjack 9y agoPrivate vehicular taxation is really unjust when done in this way. Not everyone has the same usage patterns. For example, I commute by bicycle. I would love to have a street legal van, in the eventuality that I want to move something bulky. I would use it once a month at most. Probably less. But I would have to pay thousands of Euros of road taxes just to own a street legal vehicle that is parked in my own garage. Why? Fuel is already taxed a lot to limit usage. Parking permits in cities are expensive to prohibit ownership and congestion. Why am I being taxed, exactly? BTW, I know this is not a road tax in the article but same nonsense of assuming that ownership is the same as usage.
- KitDuncan 9y agoIf you are using a car once a month, shouldn't it be far cheaper, even without taxes, to just rent one?
- zackmorris 9y agoI noticed most of the comments in this thread were about not wanting a high tax rate of 100%. I just want to offer a counterexample where people are all for it: in Costa Rica there is a similar import tax on luxury and technology items and is roughly 50-80% on cars: http://www.costaricatax.com/import-tax.htm http://www.costaricatax.com/import-tax.htm http://www.costaricatax.com/luxury-tax-cars.htm http://www.costaricatax.com/luxury-tax-cars.htm One of the main reasons for this is that everyone wants to go to Costa Rica because it's one of the nicest places in the world. So in a very real sense their import tax is a "pay to stay" tax. As Denmark is also one of the nicest places in the world, they do this as well. Everyone forgets that in the end, the people are the beneficiaries of these taxes by way of government services like free healthcare and education. Eventually benefits will come as universal basic income (UBI) as well. Now for the opinion part - I find it sad that the United Stated of America no longer has any appreciable tariffs, so in a way doesn't think of itself as a really nice place to go anymore. 40 years of so-called conservative thinking on this (that government of/by/for the people is somehow the enemy) has done a great injustice to our culture and global image as a beacon of democracy. I was born in 77 so just barely remember that it didn't always used to be this way. I fear that young people today are experiencing their cultural worth being stolen and that their feeling of ineffectualness is being amplified by divisive political tactics that will never pan out. Low taxes generally cause these sorts of problems; lower taxes will make them worse. And taxes just got lower, supposedly, even though the US already pays some of the lowest taxes in the industrialized world. The very fact that the US is unlikely to raise taxes appreciably anytime in the foreseeable future does not bode well for our quality of life IMHO.
- vinni2 9y agoI used to live in Northern Denmark and I have experienced their healthcare first hand and witnessed social welfare which helped my friends and colleagues. And I still do think this is excessive tax not well justified for the following reasons: 1. I would expect a state of the art public transport in the whole country. The rail system connecting different cities in Denmark is pretty dated and slow. Even using diesel engines in some parts. Now I would expect some part of that 180% tax to be invested here. But the fact is people are often forced to drive with car due to poor public transport connectivity in many places. 2. Even electric cars are not exempt from these high taxes anymore. This eliminates the benefit of the doubt that this was for the good of the environment. 3. The high tax for cars has historical roots. Many in Denmark believe it is no longer necessary today to fund the welfare state. https://www.thelocal.dk/20151120/whats-the-deal-with-denmarks-car-registration-tax https://www.thelocal.dk/20151120/whats-the-deal-with-denmark... 4. These high taxes are also defeating the purpose of keeping the environment clean by creating a huge market for used really old cars which are often the worst polluters. https://mereconomics.com/2016/02/09/on-the-efficiency-of-danish-car-taxes/ https://mereconomics.com/2016/02/09/on-the-efficiency-of-dan... 5. Opinion: It all boils down to having free health care, free education, really good welfare system and not being able to afford a car. Other European countries like Germany seem to have worked out a model which can make all of them affordable to most people. I can go on but got bored.
- reacharavindh 9y agoI moved to Denmark in 2017.l from south east USA. Writing this message from my hour and half long train+bus commute to work(72 km away from the city of Aarhus,DK). To me. It sucks big time! I can't afford a decent car here. True, I can get a shitty old used car that can breakdown wherever for the cost of a decent car elsewhere in the world. I'd rather save my money and take this long commute. This is one thing I absolutely hate about Denmark from the bottom of my heart. I might consider moving out of Denmark just because of this as soon as my girlfriend finds a good job opportunity elsewhere. There are so many good things I see about Denmark. But this one shitty thing trumps all the good for me! Edit: NO. Used cars are not that much cheap unless you get to the shitty category with a ton of mileage in them.
- rando444 9y agoAs someone from a neighboring country to Denmark, this to me is a sign that their system is working.
- reacharavindh 9y agoEager to hear why you think so? I'm a young person taking a 1.5 hour train+bus commute because I cannot afford a 45 minute car ride. Why do you think the system is working right? Or, in your view, what am I doing wrong?