Istat - Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (Italian National Statistical Institute)

Monetary environmental accounts

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 (split into ETS CO2 taxes and other 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 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.

Italy

Environmental tax revenue (by tax category - energy, transport, pollution and resource taxes) broken down by economic activity (tax payer) is currently available for 2008-2021. 

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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; since 2022 data reporting also takes into account the requirements established in the Commission delegated regulation 2022/125. 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.

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June 2023

 The national release calendar for environmental taxes by economic activity (ETEA) is not accessible to the public

Access to non disseminated environmental tax data can be provided mainly for research purposes under request and is subject to case by case evaluation.

Annual until 2021, biannual since 2022

The release of environmental tax statistics is announced on the main page of the Istat website (Italian section only) by means of a  'news' document - approximately half a page. It includes  information on the definition of environmental taxes, reference period, main data sources, contact persons. 

Environmental tax statistics are reguarly published in the Istat data warehouse.

Istat is moving towards a new data warehouse. At the moment both versions are running:

http://dati.istat.it (the old version)

https://esploradati.istat.it/databrowser/#/ (the new version).

Domain: NATIONAL ACCOUNTS - ENVIRONMENTAL ACCOUNTS - ENVIRONMENTAL TAX REVENUE

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Dissemination formats other than Istat data warehouse are not regularly available.

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No updated detailed description of the national methodology exists. 

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National quality reports are not available

National validation rules applied to ETEA output: check of consistency with the NTL; analysis of the consistency of the new time series with the previous one: where differences occur the reasons for the difference are investigated in detail; analysis of the year to year changes of the new time series: where large variations occur the reasons for the observed change are investigated in detail. 

Procedures and processes are regularly updated; major revisions and updates occur during the national accounts general revisions.

ETEA data reported in April 2023 are consistent with the March 2023 NTL.

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All mandatory data are provided 

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We are not aware of major deficiencies in the data.

Possible further improvements concern:

• the breakdown of system charges on renewable energy 
• the consistency over time of the Provincial tax for environmental protection 
• the breakdown of the Regional special tax on landfill dumping by user
• the breakdown of the Revenues of the Italian Central Stockholding Entity
• the breakdown of Motor vehicle duty between households and economic activities
• estimates of tax on energy input for own production of electricity and use of electricity for street light.

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For the April 2023 data delivery production time was approximately 4 months (FTE). The estimated production time includes work to provide input for 2021 preliminary estimates for the national accounts tax matrices (energy products), as well as analisys for further quality emprovements.

First estimates for reference year (n) are available after 16 months.

First estimates for reference year (n) can be at the earliest compiled after 16 months in order to be consistent with the updated NTL.

Consistently with the national accounts revision policy, final results are availalble after 33 months. They may however be further revised during the general revision processes. 

Italy transmitted the data to Eurostat on 20 April 2023 covering the years 2008-2021.

Not applicable.

Environmental taxes are selected within the National Accounts taxes by applying the Eurostat’s guidelines on environmental tax statistics and accounts. There is no case of taxes that are deliberately excluded or that are not mentioned in the ETEA handbook. 

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The calculation process does not cause break in time series. Most data sources are quite homogenous for the whole time series thus reducing the likelihood of a discontinuity in the data.

However, there is a break in the time series in 2019 due to the revision of basic data on electricity use by economic activity used to split total revenue from electricity. 

Some environmental taxes are not in operation for the entire reporting period. These cases are reported in detail in the section - comparability over time - detailed. 

The calculation process does not cause break in time series. Most data sources are quite homogenous for the whole time series thus reducing the likelihood of a discontinuity in the data.

Some environmental taxes are not in operation for the entire reporting period, these cases are reported in detail in the section - comparability over time - detailed. 

Environmental tax data are derived from the ‘General Government aggregates and Accounts’ (Conti ed aggregati economici delle Amministrazioni pubbliche) calculated by Istat’s National Accounts and are consistent with the detailed data on taxes submitted to Eurostat  in March 2023.

Environmental taxes are selected within the National Accounts taxes by applying the Eurostat’s guidelines on environmental tax statistics and accounts.

Not applicable

Environmental tax data are derived from the ‘General Government aggregates and Accounts’ (Conti ed aggregati economici delle Amministrazioni pubbliche) calculated by Istat’s National Accounts and are consistent with the detailed data on taxes submitted to Eurostat - National Accounts NTL. The 2023 ETEA is consistent with the March 2023 NTL. 

The same vintage of source data are used to compile the ETEA data for a given year. 

4 months FTE for the April 2023 data delivery and 1 month for September delivery.

The revision policy for ETEA data is as follows: update of t-3 and t-2 data in every data transmission due to the ordinary revisions of  NA data sources. In addition, the entire time series may be updated on the occasion of national accounts other than ordinary revisions.

Some changes may also occur in the time series due to revisions of input data. 

The main updates of this new version of ETEA concern :

• update of data on ‘Total surrendered units’ and ‘Freely allocated allowances’ from the European Environment Agency’s ETS database for the entire time series
• minor revision of energy use data for the years 2014-2020;
• update of data on LCP's air emission used to split SO2 and NOx pollution tax for years 2020;
• minor revision of data to split Regional special tax on dumping for year 2018-2020;
• update of national accounts input data for years 2019-2020 used as follows:
  • to split Provincial tax on motor vehicles’ insurance /D214G_C01 by NACE;
  • to split Public motor vehicle register tax (PRA) / D214D_C01 by NACE;
  • to split Motor vehicle duty paid by enterprises / D29B_C01;
  • to split Regional special tax on landfill dumping / D214H_C03;
• update of input data used to estimates energy taxes for Fishing and aquaculture sector (A03) for the years 2018-2020;
• minor revision of Excise duty for some mineral oils for the year 2020.
• update of total tax revenue for years 2020-2021. For year 2020 revision concerns total taxes only for Energy and Pollution categories .

For ETS CO2 taxes revisions only concern the NACE breakdown (not the total tax). For NACE 51 revisions are quite large - up to 236% - for almost the entire time series, due to the updated input as detailed in 17.2. Data revision - practice.

All other revisions listed in 17.2 are smaller than 20%

The ETEA data up to t-3 can be considered final and t-2 can be considered provisional.

However, the entire time series may be updated in future national accounts other than ordinary revisions or due to changes in input data. 

The main data source for the environmental tax revenue are the Istat’s National Accounts ‘General Government aggregates and Accounts’ (Conti ed aggregati economici delle Amministrazioni pubbliche); specifically, the April 2023 ETEA is consistent with the detailed NTL submitted to Eurostat in March 2023. 

Most data sources come from national accounts and environmental accounts.

In other cases consistency checks are performed. 

See sections below

Not applicable.

Most data sources are available for the whole reporting period up to the year t-2.

Taxes paid by non-residents - energy taxes:  the amount of tax paid by non-residents is calculated for taxes on diesel oil and motor gasoline; the tax rate is multiplied  by the quantity of fuels used by non-residents for international road transport, specifically:

• Diesel oil – road transport, sources:  fuel use on the Italian territory by non-residents for households, the ‘non-residents’ component is estimated consistently with the adjustment for road transport calculated for air emission accounts;
• Motor gasoline – road transport, sources: fuel use on the Italian territory by non-residents for households, the ‘non-residents’ component is estimated consistently with the adjustment for road transport calculated for air emission accounts.

Taxes paid by non-residents - pollution taxes: the amount of tax paid by non-residents is calculated for the Regional tax on aircraft noise by means of transport statistics background data on the number of flights operated by non resident companies.

The breakdown of revenue from environmental taxes by industry (NACE Rev. 2) and households for years before 2008 is currently  not available due to the lack of  some background data, namely energy use data. 

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