Essay by Eric Worrall
Aussie EV drivers in the state of Victoria are supposed to photograph their mileage for the tax man every year, so they can be charged for using the roads.
Electric car registrations cancelled after not paying road user tax
Wednesday, Mar 1, 2023
More than 240 Victorian drivers have had their car registrations cancelled for failing to pay Australia’s first tax on electric and hybrid vehicles.
The Zero and Low-Emission Vehicle road user charge, which is currently facing a High Court challenge, levies a fee on every kilometre electric vehicle drivers travel each year.
But one Victorian driver said the tax had caused her registration to be cancelled without her knowledge and she only discovered her car was not allowed on roads six months later.
Victoria’s controversial electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle tax was introduced in July 2021 – a move Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas said was designed to “ensure all motorists pay their fair share to use our roads”.
The charge, raised to 2.6 cents per kilometre for electric vehicles last year, was introduced to replace revenue that would have been collected by the national excise on fuel.
A move by South Australia’s former Marshall Government to introduce a state EV road user tax was scrapped by parliament in February.
…
Read more: https://indaily.com.au/news/2023/03/01/electric-car-registrations-cancelled-after-not-paying-road-user-tax/
Why not tax EV chargers, in the same way gasoline is taxed? Or ask EV companies to forward details of mileage collected by their electronic systems?
I’m not a fan of EVs, but this is an absurdly fiddly way to collect a tax – yet another reason not to buy an EV in Australia.
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Can road users driving on other state’s (non Victorian) roads claim a reduction of that charge? Do interstate EVs registered in another state get pinged in Victoria?
How do hybrid users calculate their tax (as they buy some highly taxed fuel and also use electricity – electricity which has Goods and Services Tax for Victoria returned through a tax sharing arrangement)
Better to register your car in another state
Register in another state- That’s illegal.. and you can be fined for not having your current home address on your licence…If you move you must update. No- you cannot claim a reduction and No- interstate drivers drive for free.
Maybe rah can pipe in as to whether this is still true. I have read that at one time, especially among the smaller northeastern states, they had a requirement that trucks driving through their state had to buy fuel in the state. The complaint was that truckers were driving through the state, but buying fuel in the surrounding states that had lower taxes. Troopers could stop a truck when it was about to leave a state and demand to see a recent receipt for fuel purchase in that state.
Taxes aren’t collected by the EV charger because most EVs don’t use them most of the time.
Daily driving is easily covered by just plugging into a wall outlet. The load is small enough that most electric power companies can’t tell if an EV is plugged in.
EVs only need to use chargers when driving long distances or if they don’t have access to an outlet at home.
If the taxes were my job, I’d scrap the fuel tax for all vehicles and pay for the roads out of income taxes. Good roads make everyone richer, whether they drive or not.
60km X 5 X 52 X $0.026 = $405AUD
Utah Motor and special fuels $0.364USD per gallon Effective Jan 1, 2023
Federal gasoline excise tax rate is 18.4 cents per gallon. It’s 24.4 cents per gallon of diesel
$0.364 + $0.184 = $0.548USD
If a car gets 26mpg then $0.548 / 26 = $0.021USD a mile.
But you have to figure the difference between currencies to get the exact difference.
1.00 Australian Dollar = 0.67653957 US Dollars
1 USD = 1.47811 AUD
Australian EV pay 0.01179266903 a mile more that a car with 26mpg would in Utah, USA. ?