NOnly a part of the reduction in fuel tax appears to reach consumers. Fuel prices rose again on Thursday, according to the ADAC. Both the traffic club and the Federal Cartel Office still see room for discounts at the petrol stations. “Actually, it should go further down, but instead the prices are currently rising,” criticized ADAC specialist Christian Laberer.
According to the traffic club, premium petrol of the E10 variety cost 1.896 euros per liter on Thursday at 10.50 a.m. on average nationwide. That is 3.7 cents more than 24 hours before. Diesel cost 1.951 euros and thus 3.3 cents more. The tax advantage – for super petrol it is 35.2 cents per liter and for diesel 16.7 – had not fully arrived in the end customer prices on Wednesday. Instead, the nationwide daily average price fell by only 27.3 cents for E10 and 11.6 cents for diesel.
“Right now many are forced to refuel”
Laberer does not consider the current increase to be justified, especially since the oil price has recently fallen and more and more tax-reduced fuel is now arriving at the petrol stations. Overall, the prices are also clearly too high: Even before the tax cut, E10 was, in his estimation, about 20 cents too expensive. “For Super E10, a fair price would have to be around 55 cents below Tuesday’s price,” he adds up. “So at about 1.60 per liter. We are currently around 30 cents away from that.”
Laberer fears that this gap will not close quickly. “Prices have to go down. But there is a risk that this will not happen. Especially now before the Pentecost wave of travel, in which many people are forced to fill up.”
The President of the Federal Cartel Office, Andreas Mundt, wants to keep a very close eye on the oil companies, as he said on Deutschlandfunk on Thursday. There is great transparency in the prices. This has the advantage “that under certain circumstances we can also ask very uncomfortable questions”. In addition, the Cartel Office wants to closely monitor developments at the refinery and wholesale level.
In view of the price development on Wednesday, Mundt said: “These are not yet the figures that the tank discount allows in full, but of course we are already seeing a significant reduction in fuel prices compared to the previous day.” At the same time, he called on drivers in a statement from his authority to compare gas prices using a price app. “Over the course of a day, prices in one and the same city often fluctuate by more than 20 cents. Tend to fill up in the early evening and at one of the cheaper gas stations.”
The tax cut should apply until the end of August. In this way, the federal government wants to relieve consumers in view of the sharp rise in energy prices. However, it does not only work at the pump, but already at tank farms and refineries. Gas station stocks purchased before Wednesday are therefore still subject to the higher tax.
Schnitzer: “High risk”
Economics Monika Schnitzer fears that oil companies could make significant profits from the tax cut despite falling prices at gas stations. “Based on past experience, especially with the 2020 VAT reduction, I think the risk is high,” said the economist of the “Augsburger Allgemeine”. “Even if a higher percentage of the tax cut is passed on this time than two years ago, the additional profit for companies due to the incomplete transfer in absolute euro amounts can still be very high.”
According to their calculations, the oil companies would have withheld 40 percent of the tax cut from the VAT reduction in summer 2020, said the member of the German government’s Advisory Council. This time, however, the gas stations were under particularly close observation.
The economist Achim Wambach expects noticeable savings for consumers as a result of the tax cut. Studies have shown that 80 percent of the VAT reduction during the Corona crisis was passed on to diesel customers and 40 percent to petrol customers, said the head of the Center for European Economic Research of the “Rheinische Post”.
