Statistical Service of Cyprus (CYSTAT)

Environment Statistics Unit

Michail Karaoli Str., 1444 Nicosia, Cyprus

Environmentally related taxes (ETEA) data presents environmental tax revenue (by tax category - energy, transport, pollution and resource taxes) broken down by economic activity (tax payer), using the NACE classification for production activities extended to cover taxes payable by households and non-residents.

Environmental tax revenue is broken down by:
A. type of environmental tax,
B. sector/industry of tax payer

A. Classification according to type of environmental tax

For analytical purposes, the environmental taxes are divided into four categories:
1. energy taxes (including CO2 taxes),
2. transport taxes,
3. pollution taxes,
4. resource taxes (excluding taxes on oil and gas extraction).

B. Environmental taxes by economic activity

Environmental tax revenues are allocated to the different tax payers:
• by economic activity according to the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Union (NACE Rev.2)
• households as consumers
• non-residents
• not allocated (impossible to be allocated to one of the categories mentioned above)

Environmental taxes by economic activity data cover taxes payable by all sectors of the economy: producers (economic activities by NACE), households as consumers as well as non-residents. 

 The environmental tax statistics are compiled based on Eurostat’s 2013 'Environmental taxes - a statistical guide'. Environmental tax is defined as "A tax whose tax base is a physical unit (or a proxy of a physical unit) of something that has a proven, specific negative impact on the environment, and which is identified in ESA2010 as a tax".

Environmental tax statistics are part of European environmental economic accounts, which constitute satellite accounts to national accounts. Thus, environmental tax statistics follows ESA2010 definition of ‘taxes’. Consequently, only payments that are identified as taxes in the national accounts can be reported as environmental taxes, whereas other types of payments to government are excluded from the scope of the data collection. Compliance with the tax definition of the national accounts improves international comparability of the statistics, and is in line with the guidance, concepts and definitions of the System of Environmental and Economic Accounting (SEEA).

Data refer to environmental taxes collected by the government and payable by the different economic agents.

The target population are all production sectors by NACE, households as consumers and non-residents.

Government controlled areas of the Republic of Cyprus

The data cover the years 2008 to 2020.

Not applicable.

Million National Currency (MNAC)

The data refer to calendar years.

Statistics on environmental taxes are based on Regulation (EC) No. 691/2011 (Annex II) on European environmental economic accounts as amended by Regulation 538/2014, as well as legal acts in the area of national accounts. Data transmission became obligatory in September 2013. Before, Eurostat collected the data on a voluntary basis.

The basis for the national accounts tax aggregates is Table 9 "Detailed tax and social contribution receipts by type of tax or social contribution and receiving sub-sector including the list of taxes and social contributions according to national classification" of the ESA2010 transmission programme - Annex B of Regulation (EU) No. 549/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2013 on the European system of national and regional accounts in the European Union. Moreover, Commission Regulation (EC) N° 995/2001 of 22 May 2001 implementing Council and European Parliament Regulation (EC) N° 2516/2000 of 10 July 2000 on the recording of taxes and social contributions sets the rules for the data sources, time of recording and comparable treatment of taxes and social contributions assessed but unlikely to be collected.

Not applicable.

Official statistics are released in accordance with the confidentiality provisions laid down in the following:

• Official Statistics Law of 2021 (Law No. 25(I)/2021) (especially Article 16 on statistical confidentiality).

• Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on European statistics and its later amendments (especially Chapter 5 on statistical confidentiality).

• European Statistics Code of Practice (especially Principle 5 on statistical confidentiality).

• CYSTAT's Code of Practice for the Collection, Publication and Storage of Statistical Data.

Under the provisions of the Official Statistics Law, all the information collected is treated as confidential and is used solely for statistical purposes. No data for any individual enterprise is published or disclosed to either public bodies or private individuals. 

No data is considered confidential at the level published.

Not applicable yet.

Not applicable.

Yearly.

Information and data at national level as well as at EU aggregate level are currently made available on Eurostats' website.

There are no news releases set up on the national website. A news release is published by Eurostat on an annual basis around January each year.

ETEA data are not yet published on the national website. Please find below the publication website of Eurostat.

There are no national databases related to ETEA available yet. Please find below the online database of Eurostat.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

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Not applicable.

See Article 11 of the Official Statistics Law of 2021 (Law No. 25(I)/2021) which is linked at concept  7.1

Statistics are produced in accordance with the provisions of the European Statistics Code of Practice and in line with the principles governing its implementation.

CYSTAT follows the guidelines provided in Eurostats' Environmental Taxes Manual which sets standards for the compilation of the data. 

The quality of statistics is assessed according to five quality criteria: relevance, accuracy, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility and clarity, coherence and comparability. CYSTAT endorses the Quality Declaration of the European Statistical System. In addition, CYSTAT is guided by the requirements provided in Article 11 of the Official Statistics Law of 2021 (Law No. 25(I)/2021) as well as Article 12 of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics, which sets out the quality criteria to be applied in the development, production and dissemination of European statistics. 

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Although, there are no known deficiencies in the data, it is expected that some of the data will also be subject to improvements in the future, as part of the continuous effort to achieve the best possible convergence between the National Tax List (NTL) and environmentally related taxes. However, revisions are expected to decrease year by year.

Updates are made on auxiliary information relating to energy and transport data and advancements are  always pursued on allocation methods.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Errors may arise during data collection or during the compilation procedure.

Data are carefully examined after collection and compared to previous years' data collections. The overall procedure is reviewed and any doubtful or non best-practice methods are re-assessed.

Not applicable.

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Not applicable.

Errors may arise during the processing of the data. They may be caused due to the large amount of micro data which are processed by automatic allocation procedures and by new additions on processing files made each year eg typing errors, formula linking errors etc.

These errors are minimised by careful examination, one by one manual scanning of micro data and new processing additions. Furthermore, they are traced by comparing annual changes on the data.

Not applicable.

The Regulation required environmentally related taxes to be provided for the first time on 30 September 2013.

Cyprus transmits data to Eurostat since 2015 because it was granted a derogation for the first two years of reporting. The most recent reporting covered the years 2008 to 2020 and the transmission took place on 29/4/2022.

The first and final estimates for reference year N are available at N+16 months. However, improvements in compilation processes may be applied later on that could affect the data of any of the years of the time series and surely the last available reference year.

See 14.1

See 14.1

Eurostat deadlines for disseminating the data are respected. Environmental taxes are disseminated to Eurostat by the end of September each year.

Not applicable.

It is possible to compare the national data with that of other EU Member States. Compliance with the definitions of the variables laid down in Regulation (EC) No. 691/2011 (Annex II) on European environmental economic accounts and the guidelines issued by Eurostat is achieved. 

Not applicable.

There have been some changes between the years but not enough to warrant the designation of a break in series. For example data about the excise duty of hydrocarbon oils were made available by type of product on a more disaggregated lelel for reference year 2014 onwards.

Data are considered comparable over time. When significant changes are introduced (e.g. change of methodology), historical time series are recalculated as far back as it is reasonably possible.

Not applicable

Not applicable.

See 15.3

Statistics are considered coherent within the data set of ETEA.

The cost and burden for the whole process of compiling the ETEA time series each year is about 450 person/hours. Specifically, it's about 3 months of work for one person who is also attending to other work tasks.

There is a formal revision policy at Cystat. Cystat publishes its Revision Policy on its website, describing the general rules and principles governing the procedure of revising data published by Cystat. 

http://www.mof.gov.cy/mof/cystat/statistics.nsf/dissemination_en/dissemination_en?OpenDocument.

The policy is based on the guidelines of the European Statistical System (ESS) also taking into account the Quality Assurance Framework of the ESS and the European Statistics Code of Practice. 

Specifically, note that whenever there are revisions in National Accounts and Public Finance data, the changes are incorporated in ETEA data during the next dissemination to Eurostat.

Revisions to the auxiliary data for earlier years as well as methodological improvements are incorporated in the whole time series so as to update and further improve the allocation to end payers.

Figures that have been significantly revised have been explained on the ETEA dataset with a footnote. For the 2022 submission,  the revisions worth noting, are:

• That revenues of the environmental tax "Electricity production licences"  were recorded for the years 2008-2013,  for the first time in 2022. In the previous submission of 2021, revenues were recorded beginning from 2014 onwards. Furthermore, relating to the revisions, this tax is now allocated in the economic activities in greater precision than in the previous submission of 2021. 
• A revision was made in vehicle fuel consumption for non residents for the  reference years 2008-2010, in 2022, following a previous revision for the reference years 2011-2018, in 2020. The second revision was made in order to smooth out the non reasonable difference from reference year 2010.
• Revenues of Green-dot, Cyprus' collective recycling system were recorded for the first time in the memo item "other environmentally related payments" of the "Pollution taxes" sheet. The payments are made by all of Green-dot's member companies which are the ones placing packaging in the market. The payments are imposed by the government throught the packaging and waste packaging law (L.32(1)/2002).These payments are then passed on to the prices of products with a proven negative impact on the environment. Note that these payments are not paid "to the government". This was not one of the three conditions set by Eurostat on the working group documents or in the validation reports.

The transmitted data can be considered as final according to the latest available National Tax List. However, if the National Tax List gets revised this year, ETEA will also be revised in next year's dissemination.

ETEA dataset is based on administrative data sources, some of them made available at the micro data level and some of them at more aggregate levels.

Almost all primary data are available at most 12 months after the end of the reference year, but the necessary auxilliary information for the allocation to the economic activities is available around 19-20 months after the end of the reference year.

The primary data information which is received from bodies outside of the Statistical Service is listed under18.1. Data is usually received by email and reminders are sent where necessary.

Data are carefully examined after collection and compared to previous years' data collections. If the quality of data is unsatisfactory, the providers of the data are contacted and revised data are submitted, where necessary. Otherwise, the part of the data which is of doubtful quality is identified and estimations are made to replace them, based on the rest of the data, on previous years' figures or other auxiliarry sources.

All potential environmentally related taxes are identified through a list of all government revenues from 2008 onwards. After detailed investigation of these revenues, through the legal framework and information from the competent authorities for its enforcement, the list of environmental taxes (see 18.1.1) is prepared. 

Not applicable.

In case that some source data (eg. from National Accounts) are not yet available for the latest year reported, then auxilliary sources are used. These figures are adjusted according to previous years differences between the two sources.

In order to estimate the taxes paid by non-residents, we use specific information for each type of fuel. For example, the consumption of jet kerosene by non-residents is found by deducting from the total the amounts consumed by the small number of resident entities.

For vehicle fuel the percentage of non-residents’ use of vehicles is small (as Cyprus is an island-nation) and mostly comes from the fuel of cars rented by tourists; it is estimated using tourist expenditure data.

Regarding the ETS permits revenues, the small number of resident enterprises under the ETS for Cyprus allows the auction revenues to be split according to the burden on the enterprises, with the restriction that whenever the total revenue exceeds the total real burden, the excess is placed on non-residents.

Conserning taxes no. 5-20, individual payments are assigned to specific economic activities, households or non-residents. The key information used here is: identification number of individuals, registration number of enterprises, names of individuals, owners, enterprises and other specific information on the tax bases.

Not applicable.

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