“Over 115,000 Germans Take Advantage of Electric Car Bonus Multiple Times, Costing State Millions in Taxes”

More than 115,000 Germans have taken advantage of the environmental bonus for electric cars several times, and the state has thus lost millions of euros in taxes, according to data from the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control, Efahrer reported.

According to the information, 115,376 people applied for the so-called environmental bonus several times in 2022. A total of 472,282 citizens and companies requested the grant, which means that one in four collected the premium for two or more cars. It is assumed that the reason for this is to resell the EVs abroad afterwards at a profit.

In 2016, Germany introduced a subsidy scheme designed to make these cars more affordable for ordinary people. And since then it has spent at least 4.6 billion euros on grants.

“The fact that private customers buy two or more new cars within a year is rather an exception,” Stefan Bratzel, head of the Center for Automotive Management, told Welt am Sonntag. “Among the approximately 116,000 buyers, there are certainly those who would use the resale model abroad.”

The automotive expert estimates the tax money the state has lost in 2022 at 380 million euros, but he says the amount is likely to be higher.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Ministry of the Economy said that the multiple claims for the environmental bonus did not allow any conclusions to be drawn about “whether the subsidized vehicles were resold after the minimum period”.

From January 1, 2023, new rules for the environmental bonus apply and the minimum holding period for electric cars after purchase has been doubled to one year. The state part of the subsidy was reduced to a maximum of €4,500 and completely abolished for plug-in hybrids.