Vehicle and transportation
After a one-year hiatus, due to corona period constraints, the tax authority continues the tradition of publishing annual automotive industry reviews. This review, for the years 2020-2019, presents a wide range of aspects of taxation and policy in the field of vehicles and includes quantitative data, various analyzes, data on the scope of tax collection and more.
The survey shows that in 2020 there was a real decrease of 21.2% in the value of imports of vehicles, a decrease of 16.9% in the amount of vehicles imported and a decrease of 10% in the volume of taxes collected on imports of vehicles, compared to 2019. However, despite this decrease, import data for 2020 High in the long term, despite the impact of the corona plague.
According to the Tax Authority, the volume of imports was affected, among other things, by the timing of the changes in the purchase tax calculations – a change in the taxation of electric and hybrid vehicles as well as updates to the green taxation formula and the level of safety equipment.
In 2019 and especially 2020, the long-term trend of erosion of car prices has slowed down somewhat compared to the consumer price index. This may be a temporary phenomenon because in 2020 there was an excess demand for vehicles – both due to the damage to global production due to the corona and due to disruptions in public transport activities (closing trains and reducing bus lines) and a natural fear of infection. In 2020, fewer car scraps were also recorded due to obsolescence – probably because under these conditions old car owners decided to continue using vehicles that in normal times would have already been out of use.
In 2020 and later also in 2021, the purchase rate of electric vehicles rose, from a negligible rate of tenths of a percent to 2.6% in the half of 2021. The purchase rate of a standard hybrid vehicle was stable in the 2019 half of 2021 – about 20.3%, while the purchase rate of vehicles Rechargeable hybrid (plug-in) rose from 1.6% in 2019 to 4.3% in the half of 2021. This is despite the significant increase in taxation on regular and rechargeable hybrid vehicles. In the field of electric vehicles, the purchase tax rate was not raised, but a shekel limit was set on the amount of the benefit, which resulted in a tax increase on electric luxury models.