Federal Statistical Office of Germany (Destatis)

Monetary Environmental-Economic Accounts (G25)

Graurheindorfer Str. 198, 53117 Bonn

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 Community (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 not considered environmental taxes. 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.

Federal territory
According to the delimination of the national economy in national accounts, the concept of resident units (registration of the activities of economic units having their permanent seat or domicile in the economic territory) is generally used in the environmetal-economic-accounts (EEA).

Environmental tax revenue broken down by:

A. type of environmental tax: 1995-2021;

B. economic activity: 2008-2021

Not applicable.

Million National Currency (MNAC)

The data refer to the 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) No. 995/2001 of 22 May 2001 implementing Council and European Parliament Regulation (EC) No. 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.

According to Section 16 (1) of the Federal Statistics Act (Bundesstatistikgesetz - BStatG), Destatis is obliged to keep individual data confidential. This does not apply to individual data with consent for publication or which cannot be assigned to an individual person and/or enterprises, as well as individual data that is publicly accessible or is aggregated with the data of others.

The EEA mainly uses data that has already been published in other statistics or is publicly available.

End of April and autumn.

Not applicable.

Statistical authorities independently decide on the timing and content of statistical publications, taking into account the objective of providing complete and up-to-date statistical data. All users have simultaneous and equal access to statistical data. 

We do not grant access to users to not disseminated environmental tax data.

Annual

Not applicable.

Environmental economic accounts - Environmental related taxes (only available in German)

A new publication format, the statistical report, will be released in the fall of 2023. It will contain the current data for environment-related taxes.

GENESIS-Online is the online database of the Federal Statistical Office of Germany. The tables provided can be retrieved free of charge and be adjusted to the individual needs of users. The results can be stored in various formats.

Not available.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Currently only available in German:

Quality report EEA (only available in German)

Methodology of environmental related taxes (only available in German)

The quality requirements for official statistics are summarised with the claim "fitness for use". User needs are at the heart of every statistics. The quality of statistical products is defined by a wide range of different criteria.

In accordance with Article 11 of the EU Statistical Regulation 223/2009, Germany sends a progress report to the Commission every two years on the implementation of the Code of Practice.

We validate the data by comparing the calculated data with the benchmarks from the national accounts. We perform a plausibility check by calculating change rates and investigating abnormalities.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Data is provided in full accordance with Regulation 691/2011.

Not applicable.

The overall accuragcy is considered to be good.

At present, there are no pollution and resource taxes in Germany. This is largely a result of the current definition of envirnonmental taxes, by which certain taxes and other charges are excluded per se such as the tobacco tax. The acreage fees and mining royalties to be paid for the exploration and extraction of mineral resources according to Article 30 and 31 of the German Federal Mining Act are also excluded and therfore no resource tax.

The “hunt tax and fishing tax” (incl. in NTL) does not refer to a concrete extraction of a specific resource but is a royalty to be paid to hunt or fish in a specific area. It is calculated as a certain percentage of the hunting lease. Thus, it is not based on a physical unit (or a proxy of a physical unit) of something that has a proven, specific negative impact on the environment. Thus, it is no resource tax.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

t+16 months

t+16 months after the end of the reference year

Final results are available at t+60 after the end of the reference year. However, data may still be revised after t+60 when revisions of the data sources occur or when there are changes or improvements in the methods applied. 

Not applicable.

Only federal taxes are used. Their legal basis is valid for Germany as a whole.

Changes in the basic statistics (e.g., the underlying classifications, reporting population, characteristics, or periodicity) or the presence of resent, more complete, or less detailed data material may result in changes in the results of the EEA. Where possible, this will be offset by estimates or by the revision of the entire time series concerned. The new time series are then comparable in themselves, but not with the previously presented.

1995-2021

National accounts will no longer classifie the hunting and fishing tax in the national tax list (NTL)  as a resource tax and will reflect this in its future NTL delivery to Eurostat. The current difference of €8 million with the NTL is therefore no longer applicable and will be eliminated with the next NTL delivery (presumably at the end of September 2023).  However, the hunting and fishing tax does not refer to a concrete extraction of a specific resource but is a royalty to be paid to hunt or fish in a specific area. It is calculated as a certain percentage of the hunting lease. Thus, it is not based on a physical unit (or a proxy of a physical unit) of something that has a proven, specific negative impact on the environment. Thus, it is no resource tax and is excluded from the German ETEA data.

Data is consistent within the given data set.

Not applicable.

The overall accounting system for environmental taxes is subject to ongoing and due-based revisions. These can also affect longer periods. Ongoing revisions result from the fact that the information in the data sources used has in turn been changed for past periods and this changed information is included in the environmental tax calculation. In addition, it is possible that a data source is no longer available after a certain time and must be replaced by an alternative. Likewise, methodological improvements may require a change in the data source. In order to keep the time series as consistent as possible, these dates may lead to a revision of the data already published for earlier reporting years.

Ongoing revisions are made in the EEA at least for the year t-1, as the provisional data or estimates need to be replaced. In addition, the national accounts data is improved by additional statistics, which are successively included in the calculations. Only after about four years, almost all the necessary basic statistics are available and the data is considered "final". This also applies to EEA, which uses national accounts data.

Energy taxes:

The accrual basis of EU-ETS taxes was corrected from 2008. The government revenue from the auctioning of EU-ETS allowances between May 1st of the year and April 30th of the following year (deadline for surrendering the allowances) is now allocated to a reporting year. The method for allocating EU-ETS taxes to NACE codes was also revised. Therefore, the total amount of energy taxes by NACE codes changes accordingly:

2017: -2% to 326%

2018: -3% to 495%

2019: -8% to 258%

2020: -77% to 15%

The change of total energy taxes is between -0,5% and 6,4% in comparision to the delivery in 2022. 

Transport taxes:

No change of the total transport taxes.

Transmitted data for 2008-2016 is final. However, data for those years may still be revised when revisions of the data sources occur or when there are changes or improvements in the methods applied.
Data for 2017-2020 is considered as provisional. However, no major data changes are expected.
Data for 2021 is partly estimated and therefore, considered as provisional.

Data is based on data from national acoounts, energy accounts and administrative data.

Annual.

Secondary statistics

Source data undergo a sequence of checks, mainly for completeness (coverage of reference periods and variables) and consistency (accounting consistency, consistency over time).

If quality is unsatisfactory, consultation with the data owners will be held.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

see 18.5.2.

Energy tax:

Taxes paid by non-residents are estimated on the basis of physical environmental statistics and accounts (energy balances, air emission accounts).

In Germany, fuel tourism in road transport is relevant. The quantities used by non-residents are available from the energy accounts separately for petrol and diesel. Estimates are based on these numbers multiplied with the average tax rates for the different kinds of fuels.

Not available.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.