During a press conference held on December 16, widely relayed by its media partners, the CEO of BSB Toyota, Moez Belkhiria, took out the hood to examine the 2026 finance law. In the viewfinder: the tax treatment of hybrid vehicles and, above all, the Toyota RAV4, which has become one of the darlings of the Tunisian market.
Faced with it, the State stands on an unchanged line: automobile taxation continues to be based on an old criterion but considered readable and administrable, engine capacity. Two logics that face each other. Two visions that struggle to meet.
A price increase which crystallizes the controversy
The trigger is encrypted. Currently marketed at around 180,000 dinars, the RAV4 hybrid could see its price rise to 220,000 dinars from April 2026, under the effect of the new tax regime provided for by the bill. A significant increase, without technical evolution of the vehicle, but resulting from a tax reclassification assimilating hybrids to conventional thermal engines.
For Moez Belkhiria, this development erases the advantage hitherto granted to hybridization and penalizes a technology that is even more economical in terms of consumption and emissions, particularly in urban use.
A general law, not a tailor-made text
In principle, the reminder is essential: the finance law is not intended to protect a model, nor to adapt to commercial success. The State does not legislate for a vehicle, even a hybrid, even a market leader. And from this point of view, the tax authorities are in their role.
A tax law sets general rules, sometimes rigid, often indifferent to particular cases. It’s up to manufacturers and importers to adapt, by adjusting their ranges, their engines or their strategies.
Displacement versus technology
But this principled rigor reveals a persistent blind spot. By continuing to think almost exclusively in terms of cylinder capacity, Tunisian taxation is struggling to integrate the complexity of modern engines. Whether a hybrid engine consumes less than an equivalent thermal engine, whether it operates partially on electricity or whether it reduces dependence on imported fuel does not matter: the volume of the thermal engine remains the fiscal compass.
In this face-to-face encounter, technology gives way to administrative simplicity. And the energy transition, although regularly invoked in public discourse, remains difficult to translate into budgetary texts.
Concretely, the bill is based on displacement thresholds which equate hybrid vehicles with conventional thermal engines, without taking into account electrification. Models exceeding the 1.6 or 1.7 liter thresholds thus find themselves fiscally penalized, while hybrids with lower displacement, often positioned in entry or mid-range segments, retain a competitive advantage.
A well-founded, but interested, criticism
The criticism formulated by Moez Belkhiria is not devoid of technical foundation. It highlights real inconsistencies between stated environmental objectives and tax tools used. But it is also carried by an actor directly concerned, defending a central model of its activity.
The law is neither anti-Toyota nor designed to slow down any particular vehicle. It is above all conservative, faithful to old criteria in a changing market.
Beyond the RAV4, the controversy reveals an unresolved question: what mobility doctrine does Tunisia really want to adopt? Reduction in energy bills, reduction in emissions, renewal of the fleet, or simply maintaining rules that are easy to apply?
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