Excise duty on diesel, the sixteenth extension is coming: vehicle tax also on the table

On September 14 we wrote that, after the Council of Ministers dedicated to the state funeral, the budget bill remained on hold pending the Istat data of September 22 (we wrote about it on September 14). That wait has not yet ended, and in the meantime the government is once again dealing with the chapter that has accompanied the budget bill since summer: excise duties on diesel.

The cut of 17.1 cents per liter, in effect since September 10, expires on the 17th. The Council of Ministers convened for September 16 is discussing a new extension lasting seven to ten days: it would be the sixteenth since the beginning of the crisis that has led the government to renew the discount week by week, between emergency decrees and mobile excise mechanisms tied to VAT revenue trends.

Diesel is not the only item on the Council’s table. Among the measures under discussion is a discount or an abolition of the vehicle tax for small and medium-power cars, a measure that would move outside the emergency perimeter of fuel to directly affect the fixed costs of owning a car.

The government is also linking the introduction of selective aid — aimed at incomes up to 28,000-30,000 euros — to October 1, and is making its definition conditional on the Istat data on deficit and GDP expected on September 22. This is the same date already flagged in the September 14 piece as decisive for the margins of the 2027 budget bill: that week’s figures will determine how much fiscal space the government will have to turn the sequence of emergency extensions into a structural measure or, alternatively, to fund targeted interventions for the lowest income brackets.

The picture emerging from the September 16 convening thus confirms two parallel tracks already observed in previous weeks: on one hand, the stopgap management of excise duties on diesel, now at its sixteenth extension without the government having yet indicated a permanent solution; on the other, the widening scope of the measures under study, which now includes vehicle tax alongside income-based selective support.

It remains to be seen whether the 7-10 day extension will be enough to cover the time needed to integrate the new measures — vehicle tax and aid from October — into the broader framework of the 2027 budget bill, whose architecture depends on the Istat data of September 22.