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At the time as Fico was submitting law proposals to lower the excise tax on diesel one after another, the tax for one litre of diesel was 38.8 cents, which is 28.5% above the minimum required by the European Union. We were at the same level as Austria, where the tax is 37.5 cents.
Today, almost four years later, we have the euro, which was introduced at an exchange rate of 30.126. Because of the strong rate, the Slovak excise tax on diesel rose up to 48.1 cents (59.4% above the minimum), while the Austrian stayed at 37.5 cents per litre. In practice that means that Slovakia has the second highest excise tax in Europe after Great Britain and the second highest diesel price in the world after Israel (http://www.gtz.de/de/dokumente/en-international-fuel-prices-data-preview-2009.pdf). It is logical that all road transporters on their way abroad also get fuel abroad, almost 600 million litres a year. Of course, all the foreign road transporters, who only pass through Slovakia, do buy their fuel abroad.
If the Prime Minister now did something unheard of, like keep his electoral campaign promise, a litre of diesel could cost less than 92 cents, which would make our diesel the cheapest for miles. What would that mean for the state budget?
Firstly, the lowering of tax from 48.1 to 30.2 cents per litre would cause a drop in tax revenues from the diesel that is sold in Slovakia, that is 1.5 billion litres. The missing sum would be 272 million euro. This sum would be substituted by revenue from the diesel that is bought abroad by Slovak road transporters (119 million euro) and the diesel bought by foreign transporters while in transit through Slovakia (135 million euro). The rest would be made up by the cancelled red diesel exception (11.5 million euro) and by passenger car drivers (5 million euro).
The state would not lose anything at all and the road transporters at strike would have their compensation for the high toll. Everybody wins.
