Belgian Taxes, fiscal horsepower

wooter — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:39:11 +0000

The Belgian tax system has its oddities. One of them is what they call “fiscal horsepower”. It is an interesting but blunt tool to define which cars are fast, and therefore should be taxed higher than others.

Accelleration is the combination of power and mass of the object you want to move. Most cars that are known to be fast are known because of their higher rate of acceleration – most normal cars can do high speeds too, if you just wait long enough for it.

So the Belgian government came with a formula to figure this out in an easy to chart number: the fiscal horsepower of a car.

This number is calculated by the next formula:

(cilinder content in liters times 4) + (weight of the car divided by 400)

Just in case if anyone’s interested in figuring out how much taxes they need to pay on their next ride.

Update:
The Belgian tax people changed their formula, and scrapped the weight of the car out of it. All info is here.

IAA 2007 in Frankfurt

wooter — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 16:40:39 +0000

So Aimée and I visited the Internationale Automobil Ausstellung, or the IAA in Frankfurt on saturday. I have been a car nut all my life, but my experiences only reached to the Brussels Auto Show, and the NAIAS in Detroit.

This was, however, something completely different. The IAA at the Frankfurter Messe or exposition area is a vast area of many, many exposition halls, together with wide roads and open areas. With all the food corners, drink stalls and promotional stands outside, it more feels like a giant amusement park than a real auto show.

But it was all about ‘our’ favourite transportational means: the car. Being one of the biggest car shows in the world, it guarantees for many world premieres. The main topic this year was how eco-friendly cars can be, ranging from fuel-efficient models by Volkswagen, BMW’s EfficientDynamics, to a large scala of real hybrids and electric cars. Mostly, these were concepts, or means that were limited to special series of cars. Only BMW’s EfficientDynamics is standard to be found up to 55% of the brand’s offering. Standard, you cannot get a non-EfficientDynamics-car. And, in contrast to many manufacturers, are the fuel-economic BMW models sportier than their older, more eco-unfriendly counterparts.

It is useless to try to list all world premieres. Likewise, it is useless to describe the whole event. I find it even not possible to visit the full event in just one day. Within two years, I’ll be booking a weekend then .

Interesting bits were the world premieres at the BMW stand: an X6 Concept, which looks like it is ready for production (test mules have been spotted on the Nürburgring!), and the same car with a first hybrid from BMW: ActiveHybrid.

Sentiment » Cars

Belgian Taxes, fiscal horsepower

IAA 2007 in Frankfurt