National Statistics Office, 

Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries Statistics Unit

National Statistics Office (NSO), Lascaris, Valletta, VLT2000, Malta

Data presents environmental tax revenue (by tax category - energy, transport, pollution and resource taxes) broken down by economic activity (taxpayer), 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 taxpayer

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 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.

Malta

Data series cover years 1995-2021.  

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Million Euro.

The data refers 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) 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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At the National level:

The NSO requests information for the compilation of official statistics according to the articles of the Malta Statistics Authority (MSA) Act – Cap. 422 (https://legislation.mt/eli/cap/422/eng/pdf) and the Data Protection Act – Cap. 586 (https://legislation.mt/eli/cap/586/eng/pdf) of the Laws of Malta implementing the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

Article 40 of the MSA Act stipulates the restrictions on the use of information while Article 41 stipulates the prohibition of disclosure of information. Furthermore, Section IX of the Act (Offences and Penalties) lays down the measures to be taken in case of unlawful exercise of any officer of statistics regarding confidentiality of data.

Since its inception, the NSO has always assured that all data collected remains confidential and that it is used for statistical purposes only according to the articles and derogations stipulated in the laws quoted above. The Office is obliged to protect the identity of data providers and refrain from divulging any data to third parties that might lead to the identification of persons or entities.

In 2009, the NSO has set up a Statistical Disclosure Committee to ensure that statistical confidentiality is observed, especially when requests for microdata are received.

Upon employment, all NSO employees are informed of the rules and duties pertaining to confidential information and its treatment. In line with stipulations of the MSA Act, before commencing work, every employee is required to take an oath of secrecy whose text is included in the same Act.

An internal policy on anonymisation and pseudo-anonymisation is in place to ascertain that adequate methods are used for the protection of data that the office collects and shares with the public in its capacity as the National Statistics Office. The policy is meant to safeguard the confidentiality of both personal and business data entrusted to the NSO. The document provides guidance for all NSO employees who process data on a daily basis as to how anonymisation and pseudo-anonymisation methods should be applied. The policy applies to all confidential, restricted and internal information, regardless of form (paper or electronic documents, applications and databases) that is received, processed, stored and disseminated by the NSO.

Data is not treated for confidentiality.

Tax Revenue by economic activity is not published by NSO.

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See concept 8.1

The Public Finance Unit publishes the news release on the Tax revenue once a year in November according to a pre-announced schedule that is available on the NSO’s website. The News Release may be accessed at the following link: https://nso.gov.mt/tax-revenues-2021/

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Quality of data is assured by adherence to the Eurostat manual Environmental taxes; A statistical guide and the ESA 2010. A quality assurance approach comprises of checks of the source data statistics (National Accounts and Public Finance Units’ data), ongoing checks of the results and methodology applied, and external checks and consultation (validation of the result by Eurostat).

The input data is regularly checked, questioned and verified with the providers i.e. Public Finance and National Accounts Units. The procedures and processes are reviewed on annual basis for each questionnaire transmission.

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All data required under Regulation (EU) 691/2011 in the area of Environmental Taxes is available by the tax category, by economic activities including taxes paid by households and non-residents. The data cover years 1995-2021.

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The source data for the environmental taxes by category are the NSO Public Finance Unit statistics. The unit uses administrative data from the Corporate Financial Management System (CFMS) which is coded in accordance with the requirements of the ESA 2010. The quality of environmental taxes is further checked in the Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries Statistics Unit. Major elements of this quality assurance procedure include checks for completeness and plausibility and comparison of the source statistics used in National Accounts Unit.

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A potential non-sampling error may arise due to data source errors, coverage errors in supply and use tables (SUT) and processing errors.

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The processing errors have been minimized over the last three years by the introduction of a number of validation checks into the working setup.  The process is still in progress following changes in the SUT source data provided by the National Accounts Unit.

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Environmental taxes data is transmitted to Eurostat at t+16 months

First estimates of environmental taxes are available at t+9 months

Environmental taxes data is transmitted to Eurostat at t+16 months

Environmental taxes data is submitted to Eurostat without delays.

Not applicable.

The estimates are based on the source data compiled in accordance with the European System of Accounts - ESA 2010, Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2013 on the European system of national accounts. This ensures consistency across EU member states.

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Environmental statistics are comparable over time following the approach adopted by the source data providers: Public Finance and National Accounts Units. Agreed methodological changes are implemented in a coordinated way and include the estimation of the back series. Whenever data are not comparable over time, it is considered and treated as a "break" in series with a flag. In case of fundamental changes to methods or classifications, revisions of long time series are performed going far back, so that an optimum range of data are offered to data users.

Environmental taxes data are available from 1995 onwards with the exception of the pollution taxes which commence from 2004.

The data originates from the Public Finance Unit within the NSO which report the taxes listed in the NTL. Any discrepancies with the NTL are continuously checked during the calculation process and possible errors are detected and eliminated prior to transmission.

The Public Finance unit collects the taxes data in view of Council Regulation 2516/2000 which amended the Regulation on the European system of national and regional accounts in the Community (ESA 2010) as concerns taxes and social contributions and clarified the rules concerning both the time of recording and the amounts to be recorded. The time of recording is defined in ESA 10 §4.26 and §4.82 as the time "…when the activities, transactions or other events occur which create the liabilities to pay taxes". In Malta, the main method for recording taxes is the time-adjusted cash. The time-adjusted cash method is applied for VAT (D211), Income Tax (D51) and Social Contributions (D611), which cover in 2021 around 84.4% of the total taxes received by the General Government Sector. The other taxes, including the environmental taxes, are recorded on a cash basis and are adjusted for accruals using the Treasury’s accruals template, which are based on the realizable debtors’ balances as recorded on the books of the tax authorities.

The Public Finance Unit collects the taxes data on an annual basis.

The source data which originate from the Public Finance Unit is supplied in the environmental taxes questionnaire and National Accounts estimates. Moreover, the National Accounts supply and use tables are used to derive ratios applied for the economic activities’ breakdown.  The breakdown by the industry for years before 2008 was recalculated from NACE rev.1.1 to NACE rev.2. using a bridge table provided by National Accounts Unit.

Data is fully coherent internally; only one vintage of data originated from the Public Finance Unit is used.

ETEA is compiled by 1 FTE and it takes around one month to complete.

A written revision policy related to environmental taxes and ETEA compilation is not in place.

Revisions in ETEA estimates follow the revisions in the source data units: Public Finance statistics and National Accounts. Any possible changes and revisions in the environmental taxes in the Public Finance Unit are communicated early with the ETEA compilers, so these are reflected in the transmitted result in the same reporting year. A complex revision in the National Accounts Unit, availability of new SUT results is followed by the Environmental, Agriculture and Fisheries Statistics Unit, depending however on the time span between the availability of revised statistics and transmission deadlines.

During the 2023 ETEA data collection, revisions were registered for the energy, pollution and transport taxes following new SUT tables for 2017. The years 2017 onwards were revised in line with the new result. The revisions resulted in further redistribution across various NACE activities.

ETEA data is considered to be final or subject to revision depending on the source data changes:

-          Years 1995-2017 - final estimate

-          Years 2018-2021– half final; revision will follow new National Accounts SUT result (SUTs 2018 onwards)

The source data of environmental taxes is based on administrative data. Breakdown by economic activities are mainly based on the National Accounts supply and use tables.

The source data is available by end of February of the reporting year.

All source data is provided by other NSO units: Public Finance and National Accounts. The Public Finance Unit provides annual environmental taxes by category by end of February of the reported year. National Accounts provides the SUT data which is used to subdivide the taxes by economic activities. If the SUT compilation is delayed in the National Accounts Unit, the latest SUT available is considered as the benchmark for the following years, including the early estimates.

The methodology used to check the data is typically that of comparing past trends, growth rates, and published data by National Accounts and Public Finance so as to ensure consistency within the NSO.

The data computation process includes source data validation and updating of the template used which combines the aggregated annual environmental tax by category and the SUT ratios.

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The breakdown by industry is estimated on the basis of the SUT ratios. When the tables are not available or not compiled, the latest SUT ratios are used for the set of years.

The tax payable by non-residents is estimated based on the SUT ratios, which indicate the export of goods and services. When the tables are not available or not compiled, the latest SUT ratios are used for the set of years.

The breakdown by industry for the years before 2008 was recalculated from NACE rev.1.1 to NACE rev.2 using a bridge table provided by National Accounts Unit.

Data is not adjusted.

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