This is a complicated subject, so bear with me. France is subjecting its people with a carbon tax. It's just another tax, like so many in France (don't get me wrong, living in both the US and France, I pay as much taxes in both countries, they just have different names). But this tax is "special" since it's the first tax levied for the ecology.
As off the 1st of January 2010, anything emitting CO2 will be taxed. You get to pay €17 (funny, that's excluding Value Added Tax, ie, a tax on the tax) per tonne (=1000 kilograms) of CO2. That's the bad news. In other words, if your motorcycle emits 1 tonne of CO2 per year, you'll pay €17.
The good news is that the totality of the money received, an estimated €2.7 BILLION will be returned to the tax payers in the form of tax credits and subsidies, particularly for the purchase of ecological equipment (like wind power generators, solar panels, fuel efficient heaters).
But as is always the case, specially here in France, special interest groups have a preferential treatment. For example, commercial trucks have a 36% reduction in the tax, despite being one of the biggest polluters. The same applies to the farmers, who will see 75% of their taxes reimbursed.
They also have complicated formulas in place, like if you live far away from your place of work AND from public transport, than your motorcycle/car will not be taxed as much. Thankfully, folks in wheelchairs will not need to pay the carbon tax.
Luckily, the French politicians have not decided to raise a carbon tax on electric vehicles, since 80% of electricity in France comes from nuclear stations, so very little CO2 pollution there.
So all-in-all, a strange law, typically French, ie, you need to PhD to understand. The idea to have those who pollute the most, pay the most, is not true. In fact, it's those that have the least money who pay the most, ie, the common citizen.
Let's see how long this will last....
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