Planned Packaging Excise Duty Does Not Solve Current Problems
it does not help the environmental goals set in the law’s drafting intentions. On the contrary, establishing a new tax places excessive administrative and tax burden on entrepreneurs, increases the probability of avoiding the law and is primarily meant for filling the state treasury.
According to the drafting intention of the law, the new packaging excise duty serves three purposes: decreasing packaging placed on the market, increasing the credibility of the data declared to the packaging register and increasing the state revenues.
In the Chamber’s opinion, the new packaging excise duty will not have a significant impact on decreasing the quantity of packaging placed on the market, because the packaging operators are using optimum packaging already now or they have no option to influence the quantity of packaging due to the fact that the volume of their goods is too low to be able to influence international manufacturers to decrease packaging.
One of the problems set out in the drafting intentions, is the fact that the state is unable to identify the accurate quantity of packaging placed on the market by packaging operators, due to which the data showing, which quantity of the packaging has been handled, cannot be considered reliable. As one of the problems, the drafting intention sets out the fact that the state cannot establish the specific quantity of packaging placed on the market by the packaging operators, due to which the data showing, which quantities of packaging have been handled, cannot be considered as reliable data. In the Chamber’s opinion, the planned packaging excise does not help in improving the credibility of data. The new excise duty has rather the contrary effect, because the additional tax obligation increases the motivation of business to declare smaller quantities of packaging placed on the market.
In the Chamber’s opinion, one of the reasons for the low level of credibility of the data in the packaging register is weak state supervision, due to which efforts should be made to make that more efficient. The State Audit Office has pointed that problem out in its audit carried out in 2010, however, the state has done nothing to make the supervision more efficient.
According to the drafting intentions, one of the problems with the current packaging excise duty is that the packaging excise duty has no fiscal impact that is typically one of the main goals of a tax. In the Chamber’s opinion, one of the main aims of the packaging excise duty is to have a positive impact on the environment or motivate the packaging operators to collect the packaging waste brought to the market and recycle the materials. The current excise duty has served that purpose relatively successfully. The new packaging excise duty will not help to fulfil the environmental purposes. Therefore, the Chamber does not consider it reasonable to pass a new law only for the purposes of increasing state revenues. Similarly to Estonia, the packaging handling systems of other EU countries also lack the fiscal impact.