Starting from January 1, 2017, the drivers of vehicles using gas will have to pay more for fuel. Even the drivers of luxury cars will have to pay more than others staring from coming year.

The news was confirmed by the Director of Registration of Vehicles, Fiqiri Midha in interview for local media on Sunday where he explained that the new fiscal package adopted by the government will bring two new taxes for vehicles.

He stated that the luxury tax will be paid by those who own cars with the number of seats 4 + 1, with 3000 cubes cylinders and bought at Lek 7 million. Midha said that the new tax will be paid even if the vehicle meets only one of the criteria. According to him, luxury tax is paid by about 5,400 vehicles, or 1.5 percent of total number of vehicles.

The Ministry of Finance has prepared the fiscal package which foresees another change according to which luxury car will be considered those bought at a price of Lek 5 million, not Lek 7 million and above as it is in the current law.

Based on official statistics for the first nine months of 2016 for this category of vehicles, I can say that there were 5421 luxury cars that were taxed according to two criteria in the law, ie over 3,000 cubic cylinders and the price of the vehicle over Lek 7 million.

Of these, 600 were new luxury vehicles that they were registered for the first time and started to pay the new tax.

The highest number of luxury cars is registered in cities such as Tirana, Durres, Fier, Shkodra and Vlora while in the provinces the number of cars registered as luxury cars is low.