From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
This will please the Dordogne luvvies!
Motorists face being taxed for driving electric cars in France under Rachel Reeves’s pay-per-mile plan.
Motorists holidaying abroad will continue to pay the 3p tariff even if they are not using UK roads.
It means a 1,530-mile round trip from Calais to Nice on the south coast of France would cost an extra £45.90.
Drivers will essentially be taxed twice, as the mileage tariff would come in addition to the “péage” tolls, which are commonplace on French motorways.
Critics of the policy told The Telegraph the failure to discount charges for mileage racked up abroad would be “unfair and a huge flaw”.
The Chancellor is due to announce the pay-per-mile scheme at this month’s Budget, with the rates introduced from 2028.
The 3p tariff would align with the annual vehicle excise duty (VED) payment, with EV owners asked to estimate the number of miles they will drive in the year ahead. Hybrid vehicles will also be liable for the charge, but at a lower rate.
Full story here.
Naturally the greenies are up in arms!
But there is one alternative – simply charge all EV owners a fixed tariff surcharge of £1000 on their VED. That would equate to the fuel duty tax paid by most petrol car drivers.
Currently at 3p/mile, they are only paying about half the fuel duty paid by the latter.
Better still, if you have an EV and think you are being treated unfairly, sell it and buy a diesel!
It will be every car charged per mile; not just EVs.
There is an annual car check (MOT) in the UK that also records the mileage. So every car could be charged for the miles driven.
Every ice car pays fuel duty and VAT at the pump. Then they pay VED while EVs did not.
The pay per mile is intended to make up the losses from fuel duty+VAT as numbers decline.
You can clock a car…. but you cannot tax the electricity
It’ll start with EV only, but no doubt it’ll get expanded to cover all vehicles after a few years, to “encourage the transition”.
The EV owners will no doubt start a whining campaign, complaining that ICE drivers are being subsidized by not having to pay the per km charges even though they pay fuel taxes that EV owners don’t.
I hate to tell you, but it’s already taxed. Firstly VAT, and an additional ‘green energy’ tax.
Nothing like the double whammy on fuel.
VAT is 5%, not the 20% ice cars pay.
Not to mention the other taxes paid to fill the coffers from which the Wind/Solar subsidies get paid.
I’m pretty sure that gas/diesel also pay VAT.
You Could tax the electricity by simply outlawing home charging cables then gathering the tax during the charging station visits. And/or requiring home charging to be metered separately then taxing the electricity passing through the secondary meter.
So, if some of the miles are driven in France, are those kilometers subtracted from the annual mileage, or are the drivers being charged twice?
Twice.
When the cars are being parked on the Ferry or train, the current mileage can be recorded, both outbound and inbound. It would be a simple addition with little extra cost. But it’s not included in the bill as presented.
Brexit!
Labour.
Labrexit?
Labrador X
Lab Rats
Labour? Isn’t that baby born yet??
The luvvies are still kicking and screaming
Mornington Crescent.
Kings Cross? Too gay.
You won
Only with his stinking pen
The existing VED is a flat rate, and paid wherever you drive the car, UK or foreign, much or little. The new rules are proportional to use, and so a lot fairer. The fact that overseas miles will be counted is a practicality issue.
Gosh the antipodean expert pipes up.
EVs have been exempt from every charge and are only just beginning to pay VED, Nick. Where have you been???
Taxation off shore? I’m not sure they can get away with it in another jurisdiction.
“Where have you been???”
Whose side are you on? This post is a whinge about the injustice to EV owners of maybe having to pay-per-mile for foreign driving.
“Whose side are you on? “
I thought that obvious. The average Englishman. And you are with team alarmism – who now think they can tax us wherever we go..
Wait till the breathing tax kicks in…
Carbon Tax IS the breathing tax.
Several years ago I watched a documentary(about international corporate monopolizing of water supply iirc).
They interviewed an old skinny ratfaced(probably very rich) guy wearing a white suite in a white Stretchlimousine.
He said that water is just the beginning and that they’ll let people pay for breathing.
Back then I thought impossible.Crazy,stupid old fart..
It took me quite a few years until I realized that I was the stupid.
Just hold your breath a little while longer, that newly installed CO2 scrubber on your face will kick in any minute now.
Except this is an additional tax, not a replacement for VED.
Nope, the VED depends on a lot of factors and only recently has been charged on EVs.
My little Fiesta with a 1.0l 125bhp turbo-charged engine is only £20 per annum, whereas a SUV could be several hundred pounds per annum.
Except EVs will be charged at a much lower rate as ICEs already pay 60-70% on the price of fuel, depending on the price at the pump.
My little Fiesta probably averages 40 mpg, so I’m paying roughly 8.7p per mile in tax, including fuel duty and VAT.
How is paying 3p per mile for an EV “fairer”?
I sense a loss of control…
You are Kier Starmer and I claim the tenner.
“Saving the planet” gets expensive after a while. Who knew?
EV fire sale. Get them while they’re hot!
Because their batteries caught fire?
EVs typically weight 50% more than the similar gasoline vehicles (those batteries weight a lot!). This increases road wear and tear (not to mention they go through tires faster). So taxing them for their road wear and tear seems reasonable.
The average weight difference is about 15-20%, not 50 %.
Don’t give them ammo.
“The average curb weight of Tesla model Model 3: Ranges from 3,582 lbs to 4,072 lbs”
“The average curb weight of a Toyota Camry generally falls between 3,241 pounds and 3,572 pounds”
Using the two names I see most often I get (3582-3241)/3241 = 11%, on the low end.
I don’t have an opinion to add, just sharing the check step.(Best selling USA car is Ford F150… in that case the weight difference becomes even less an issue).
edit:
“The 2024 F-150 .. ranges from 4,021 to 5,540 pounds. This depends on the model and features ”
The price of knowledge in the modern economy – now I’ll be looking at car dealership ads every time I Google for the next 3 months.
This is why you shouldn’t use Google
Dear EV owners…
Welcome to the Real World!
The world of paying for road maintenance just like ICVs do at the pump.
3p per mile would equate to…
60p tax on a gallon of petrol for a car averaging 20mpg
90p tax on a gallon of petrol for a car averaging 30mpg
How much road maintenance tax is levied per gallon of petrol for ICVs in the UK and EU?
Quite in fact, EVs should be paying more than ICVs per mile driven because the extra 1100# battery never decreases weight as it gets depleted. EVs always weigh 1100# more than their ICV counterparts creating more wear and tear on the road surfaces.
There is unavoidable unfairness in any road usage fee. In my state (Georgia) there is a flat $210 annual fee to register an electric vehicle, regardless of actual usage. EVs used to get the major benefit of free usage of the HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes, but that has sunset and now they pay the same toll as any other vehicle.
2025 GA state fuel taxes are $0.3385 / gallon, so $210 for registration is equivalent to purchasing 620 gallons of gasoline. The average US passenger vehicle is driven between 12,000 and 15,000 miles per year. The MPG equivalents of 620 gallons for those usages are 19.4 and 24.2 MPG respectively. This means that Georgia EV owners driving the average 12K-15K miles per year are subsidising non-EV owners with vehicles averaging more than 24 miles / gallon.
Since retiring I drive less than 6,000 miles per year in a hybrid averaging 37 MPG, so my annual GA fuel tax is about $55. If I drove 15K miles per year I’d end up paying about $137 in GA fuel taxes. Thank you EV owners!
I think to minimize the administrative burden of assessing per-mile charges, you simply add tax at EV charging stations. People with home chargers in GA can get a preferential rate for off-hours use, so you could build in an EV usage tax to home electric bills which claim the EV rate. This has the advantage that when EV owners travel out of state, they pay taxes where they charge, similar to collecting motor fuel taxes where people fill up.
In the US both federal and state motor fuel tax revenue is restricted to building and maintaining road infrastructure but in the UK it’s just another income stream to use for any purpose, so a shift to EVs and consequent loss of motor fuel taxes impacts many government departments other than the transportation sector. This is why they have to be more aggressive in replacing the lost revenue — caused by their own stupid policies, but that’s another matter.
“In the US both federal and state motor fuel tax revenue is restricted to building and maintaining road infrastructure…”
I know in the past it used to be that way. But like property taxes funding schools and social security being a segregated trust fund, I am not convinced in many cases it has become a budget line item, rather than a segregated fund.
It is ONLY about the money, as always.
An economics lesson:
Taxation, no matter what righteous name you give it to fool the public, takes money that you worked hard to earn, and gives it to the people who will spend it in the worst, most wasteful ways possible.
Economist Milton Friedman pointed out why that is by explaining the hierarchy of spending accountability:
-You spending your money: most accountable
-You spending other people’s money: less accountable
-Other people spending your money: less accountable
-Other people spending other people’s money: least accountable and wasteful
Taxation is always the least accountable and wasteful form of funding. It’s a necessary evil in civil society, so giving them only the minimum required to do their jobs is always the best policy. The more you allow them to take, the more they ruin your life because of the power you’ve given the wasters. It’s that simple.
“Critics of the policy told The Telegraph the failure to discount charges for mileage racked up abroad would be “unfair and a huge flaw”.”
Cry me a river, how do you think the rest of us feel about the EV subsidies we are paying for?
“as the mileage tariff would come in addition to the “péage” tolls”
So what? We pay more for taxes than for the good itself when we buy gasoline and if we take the autoroutes we still pay for it, the autoroutes don’t provide tax free gasoline LOL.
Most motorways in Europe save me as much in fuel as I pay in tolls. They’re very good roads.
For now.
It’s obvious that EV owners need to unionize like everyone else in the UK and the continent.
What some company could do to get ahead of things is develop a GPS chip that can only track miles or kilometers, and has a map of state/country/other boundaries. It would store how many miles/kilometers moved and which political boundaries it’s moved within.
It should NOT record any position data other than border crossings. It should not record WHERE any border was crossed, just that (for example) it went from California to Nevada.
If government wants to know how many miles/kilometers a vehicle has been driven, they have no business knowing if you drove 20,000 miles around Atlanta or drove 20,000 miles all over Georgia.