The government council does not want to wait for the federal government and announces an interim solution.
Anyone who fills up with electricity relieves the burden on the environment, but also uses the road infrastructure.
Owners of pure electric cars pay no traffic tax. This is what the Zurich electorate decided in June 2012 with a resounding yes to the Traffic Tax Act. The incentive to switch to a car that is powered without fossil fuels had little effect in the early years. If it was a decisive factor for the purchase of an e-car at all.
Technical progress and more expensive petrol have changed the development significantly. E-cars are no longer a niche product. In the last three years, their share of new registrations in the canton of Zurich has skyrocketed to 13 percent. This development will undoubtedly continue.
That’s good for the climate. On the other hand, the road fund is suffering. About 70 percent of its income comes from the taxes paid by the owners of petrol-powered vehicles, and the federal government contributes the remainder from the mineral oil tax. In the year just ended, around CHF 100 million more than was spent remained in the coffers from which the construction and maintenance of cantonal roads are paid for. However, the fund portfolio of around CHF 1.5 billion is offset by a higher amount of road infrastructure expenditure that has not yet been written off.
Fund balance turns negative
Most importantly, revenue is falling. Two short-term innovations contribute to this. From the new year, 20 percent of the deposits in the road fund will go to the municipalities for the maintenance of their municipal roads. This also goes back to a referendum in September 2020. This will reduce the annual balance of the road fund by around CHF 70 million to CHF 30 million. In addition, a total of 50 million francs from the road fund will be available for e-mobility in the near future, primarily as subsidies for the installation of e-charging stations.
In addition to this additional strain on the fund due to new expenditure, there is a long-term drop in income from the electrification of road traffic. Based on a trend analysis by the Swiss eMobility association, the Road Traffic Office has calculated that the annual balance of the road fund will be negative earlier than previously expected and will then fall by more than 300 million francs by 2050.
A similar development is also foreseeable for the federal government and the mineral oil tax. Until now, the credo in Zurich has been: wait and see what Bern intends to do. Apparently that no longer applies: in a supplementary report on the road fund to the cantonal council that has just been published, the cantonal council makes a specific proposal for an interim solution.
In the case of petrol-powered passenger cars, the road tax is calculated based on the weight of the car and the displacement of the engine. In the future, the weight will be decisive for e-cars, for which no tax has been paid so far. The proportion for the cubic capacity is still omitted. “This would still give the electric vehicle an advantage over the combustion vehicle,” writes the government council.
This is not yet a fully formulated application for an amendment to the Traffic Tax Act, which would be absolutely necessary. However, if the measure were implemented from 2026, it would have a very positive impact on the road fund, according to the government: by 2035, the fund portfolio would only be reduced by around three percent compared to the current level. This would gain time to find a long-term solution.
Suddenly there is a hurry
The proposed interim solution comes as a surprise in two respects. First, it is attached to a report that primarily deals with the financial law handling of the road fund. Secondly, at the beginning of 2022, the government refused to the cantonal council to tinker with the traffic taxes.
The responsible security director Mario Fehr (independent) told the council in early 2022 that there were only around 20,000 purely electric vehicles in the canton. Their share will increase in the coming years. Only then is the time to change the law. In retrospect, Fehr assessed the incentive of the fee exemption as low. Traffic taxes make up only two to three percent of the cost of a vehicle.
Now it sounds different. In the summer of 2021, the cantonal office for mobility envisaged an adjustment of traffic taxes in the “Dinamo” concept for digitization and sustainability of mobility. Nevertheless, the interim solution that has now been formulated comes as a complete surprise to Alex Gantner (FDP, Maur), President of the Cantonal Transport Commission. The step indicates a certain nervousness in the government about the development of the road fund, he said on request.
The SVP traffic politician Christian Lucek (Dänikon), who is staying in Latvia, is also amazed, for another reason. His group is critical of the subsidies for e-charging stations. Because these vehicle owners benefit, who then no longer pay a traffic tax into the pot from which their subsidies come.
Lucek said there had never been any talk of a levy on e-cars in the commission in the past few weeks. But that is exactly what the SVP wants. However, this solution is likely to be a few years away. It could seem contradictory to pay vehicle owners a contribution to a private charging station on the one hand and to immediately levy a new fee on the e-car on the other.