Greater weight of environmental taxes in Portugal than in the EU – Taxes
Revenue from environmental taxes represents 6.3% of the total collected by Portugal last year, above the average for European Union countries. However, with the impact of covid-19 on tax revenues, the weight of these taxes went down and above average.
The data was released by the EU statistics office on Wednesday, December 14th. According to Eurostat, 6.3% of the total revenue collected from taxes and social contributions refers to environmental taxes. This value is higher than the average of the European Union, where these taxes represent, last year, 5.3% of the total collected.
Within environmental taxes, the category with the greatest impact, in most Member States, is energy. In Portugal, revenue from energy taxes accounted for almost 5% of the total – again above the EU average. Among the 27, revenue from these taxes was around 4% of the total in 2020.
However, due to the covid-19 crisis, most Member States reported “important declines” in energy taxes compared to 2019. In Portugal, this reduction was more than 0.5 percentage points of total tax revenue – second only to Estonia, Slovenia, Romania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Italy and Malta. The reduction in Portugal was higher than the EU average, which was around 0.3 percentage points.
Sending shipments down with covid
Eurostat today also released data on remittances felt (and received) by Member States last year.
In 2020, European Union residents sent out of the union €34.1 billion, 3% more than in 2019. Most personal transfers consist of amounts sent by migrants to their countries of origin.
Express remittances to the European Union rose by 6% to 12 billion euros, compared to 2019.
In 2020, immigrants residing in Portugal sent 698 million euros to their countries of origin, down from the 711 million euros sent in pre-covid.
As in previous years, around 53% of transfers took place within the European Union in 2020.