Road tax: authorities are again considering the option of o  its inclusion in o  fuel price?

The authorities promise to untie the state duty from technical inspection in the near future. But, judging by the Minister of Transport and Communications Alexei Avramenko, there is still no final decision on how to do it.

 

- It is necessary to untie the fee from the technical inspection, and it will be untied. Right now, projects are being prepared and there are heated discussions: what should be the system of inclusion in fuel or control through video fixation? - Alexei Avramenko, Minister of Transport and Communications, told CTB on the air. - I think a final decision will be made in the near future and the topic of binding to the technical inspection will go away.

 

It should be said that a few days before the Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Kukharev said that "the regulatory documents are ready, the decision will be taken in the near future.

 

We shall remind you that the so-called road tax was introduced in 2014. Now it has to be paid for the entire period of permission for admission to traffic - that is, until the next maintenance. For new cars, this period was 2 years. Due to the fact that you need to pay large sums of money immediately, citizens simply began to massively ignore the inspection. According to the most modest estimates of Beltech inspection, about 50% of drivers did so.

 

In January 2019, the Ministry of Finance prepared a new draft decree and submitted it for public discussion. It was assumed that the fee would be paid even on a monthly basis. The longer the payment period, the lower the amount of the fee. The maximum term was supposed to be 1 year. It was planned to control the payment with the help of photofixing cameras: the non-payers would receive "letters of happiness" similar to those that come for speeding.

 

At first the state duty was to be waived from the TO from April 1, 2019, then - from July 1, then from January 1, 2020. However, the document was never signed.

 

The government was also considering the option of including the fee in the fuel price, but it did not find support. Inclusion of the fee in the fuel price would have inevitably led to an increase in fuel prices, which would have dispersed inflation with all the ensuing consequences, argued the Ministry of Finance. In addition, construction and agricultural equipment are exempt from paying the state duty - and if the payment is included in the price of fuel, attempts to lobby the industry for preferential fuel prices will immediately begin, which could lead to the blossoming of gray schemes.

 

In early March this year, Transport and Communications Minister Alexei Avramenko spoke about the latest version of the project. But even this signing did not follow.

 

Recently, the president signed an order "On additional measures to address pressing issues of life of the population," which included issues complained about by citizens, giving signatures for Lukashenko. One of the items in the list was the solution of the issue with the state duty excluded from the technical inspection.