The Impact of Tax Reform on New Car Purchases in Ireland

Hugh Hennessy and Richard Tol

No WP349, Papers from Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI)

Abstract: We examine the impact of recent tax reforms in Ireland on private car transport and its greenhouse gas emissions. A carbon tax was introduced on fuels, and purchase (vehicle registration) and ownership (motor) taxes were switched from engine size to potential emissions. We use a demographic model of the car stock (by age, size, and fuel) and a car purchase model that reflects the heterogeneous distribution of mileage and usage costs across various engine sizes. The model shows a dramatic shift from petrol to diesel cars, particularly for large engines. The same pattern is observed in the latest data on car sales. This has a substantial impact on tax revenue as car owners shift to the lower tax rates. The tax burden has shifted from car ownership to car use, and that the overall tax burden on private car transport falls. As diesel engines are more fuel efficient than petrol engines, carbon dioxide emissions fall modestly or, if we consider the rebound effect of travel costs on mileage, minimally. From the perspective of the revenue, the costs per tonne of carbon dioxide avoided are (very) high.

Keywords: Private; car; transport/Republic; of; Ireland/carbon; dioxide; emissions/fiscal; policy/taxes/ireland/taxes/Ireland/Private; car; transport/transport/Car; ownership/Carbon; dioxide; emissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env, nep-pbe and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.esri.ie/pubs/WP349.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The impact of tax reform on new car purchases in Ireland (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:esr:wpaper:wp349

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Burns ().