How would pay per mile car tax work?

Armageus said:
Might be worth a skim of the thread - this is largely about EVs
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Same logic can apply to EVs - just different fuel type :p We already pay among the highest (if not the highest) energy costs in Europe - I don't know the exact breakdown of how much the government skims off it - cursory glance says about 16% but I suspect the number is much higher if you add it up at each stage in the chain. We already pay tax per mile, just different rates ;)
 
Haggisman said:
Currently public charging is at 20% VAT vs 5% at home, which is part of the reason it's so expensive, so you think it would be a flat rate/kw rather than based on the cost of that kw?
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Ah, Wasn't aware of the VAT difference.

Thats explains why public charging is more expensive (other than profiteering)

I think just this thread alone shows its going to be a minefield to sort and probably wont work as expected.
 
Haggisman said:
Currently public charging is at 20% VAT vs 5% at home, which is part of the reason it's so expensive, so you think it would be a flat rate/kw rather than based on the cost of that kw?
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kWh, not kW*

Sorry, just still seems to be some confusion about units floating around.
 
The VAT on public charging is a relatively small reason why it’s expensive.

Don’t forget, 5% or 20% of a small number is still a small number.

The issue is the base cost of public charging is considerably larger than home charging. That is the fundamental driver of the cost.

In almost call cases, public chargers have their own dedicated power supply and associated network and standing charges. The bigger your supply, the bigger your standing charge.

Then there is the upfront capital investment which needs to be amortised over a reasonable period.

Then there are other fixed and viable costs such as finance costs, maintenance, customer supports and transaction fees etc which need to be absorbed somewhere.

Where as home charging you just bang a box on the wall, forget about the £1k you spent doing that and just account for the 7p/kwh.
 
the converse question of cheap overnight rates is more pertinent - commercially it's economic to invest in batteries to time-shift energy and those will increasingly compete for that energy.

Despite cheaper energy on the continent the public chargers are little/no cheaper, which also shows it's the other overheads for the public charging infrastructure that predominate in price.
(nonethelessas the US ambassador said “Energy costs in the United Kingdom are too high on which to run an industrialized economy,” ).
 
if I was being charitable I would say the UK has more significant weather swings which puts more pressure on our road surfaces than Spain which may also explain partly why their roads are better .

regarding the pay per mile

I get that they need to make up for lost revenue somehow and EVs do wear out roads etc just like other vehicles (I do wish our car tax went on roads etc) .

The thing is EVs without tax breaks which not everyone can get (I can't) still cost a little more than petrol/diesel equivalents new and 2nd hand still significantly more for an actual usable EV.

The hook was always pay more up front and get no car tax and cheap per mile driving. The no car tax perk is already gone (and done retrospectively as well unlike dirty old "eco" diesels which still pay v.little) so all that is left is cheaper per mile driving - which doesn't exist anyway if you rely on public charging.

as an example our at the time almost 6 year old. bmw i3 (essentially a micro car) cost £18k (a forced emergency purchase not a great price even then). we could have gotten a hell of fossil burner and more practical for a lot less, but we worked out over the life of the car we would break even on cheap running.

*TLDR* if they need to bring it in then it should probably be for ALL cars imo OR only put it on new cars bought from the date it comes in as the gap in price between ICE and EV is smaller now than it was - because cost of driving was absolutely a hook to get most existing customers to stomach the extra cost of going EV over petrol/diesel.
 
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bigmike20vt said:
*TLDR* if they need to bring it in then it should probably be for ALL cars imo OR only put it on new cars bought from the date it comes in as the gap in price between ICE and EV is smaller now than it was - because cost of driving was absolutely a hook to get most existing customers to stomach the extra cost of going EV over petrol/diesel.
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So you want ICE drivers to pay fuel duty AND a pence per mile charge on top?

3 ppm is still less than the 5 ppm in duty for an average economical petrol car so the incentive you seem to think is necessary for EV is still there. Home charging would still mean they are cheaper to run than ICE and every EV owner I've spoken to says they wouldn't have one if they didn't have the ability to charge at home so the argument for those that can't seems to be irrelevant.
 
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lordrobs said:
So you want ICE drivers to pay fuel duty AND a pence per mile charge on top?

3 ppm is still less than the 5 ppm in duty for an average economical petrol car so the incentive you seem to think is necessary for EV is still there. Home charging would still mean they are cheaper to run than ICE and every EV owner I've spoken to says they wouldn't have one if they didn't have the ability to charge at home so the argument for those that can't seems to be irrelevant.
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I know a couple of people without home charging. it's not ideal but it's possible. (my work offers 20p kWh charging so probably close to diesel cost per mile but only if no extra cost per mile tax) as for cost per mile tax in general ... Given I paid a probably £10,000 premium to have an EV over a similar ICE for each of our cars, justified in part because of cheaper running costs, I would say that is a lot of fuel tax before the EV breaks even.

once EVs are cost parity with ICE that is when it could maybe be bought in to level the paying field... maybe that is now for NEW cars but that is why it should be going forward not backwards (like I said they don't treat ice like that my wife's old "eco" diesel would still be £30ish had it not been written off
 
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I think taxes like this disproportionately affect those on low income who may often require such mobility to work or live, so a pay per mile tax would be a much higher proportion of their income than for a wealthy person, who would most likely suck it up.

Let’s assume for a second that we want to work towards net zero and improve air quality, reduce deaths and impact of climate change. Then we should tax dirty sources of fuel higher than clean ones, making it economically more viable to use green energy. That could be cheaper electricity whilst wind and solar are producing in the UK and more expensive petrol and diesel and electricity from dirtier sources. This is technically all possible now and with EV grants the market can move there. Maybe some investment in EV infrastructure too would help.

However, I think this is more likely to be about filling a tax revenue gap that is opening due to a move to lower emission vehicles. Which shows I think a massively naive, myopic and unambitious approach to taxation that will only make most people’s lives worse. Basically continuation of a theme for this government unfortunately. I’m sure this ‘news’ is to test the waters and reaction to see just how far we will collectively bend over whilst the tax man collects his payment from all of us who are increasingly less able to afford it.
 
alex24 said:
However, I think this is more likely to be about filling a tax revenue gap that is opening due to a move to lower emission vehicles. Which shows I think a massively naive, myopic and unambitious approach to taxation that will only make most people’s lives worse. ts his payment from all of us who are increasingly less able to afford it.
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Indeed, there's going to be a lot of people who tried to do the right thing by switching from ICE to EV at some considerable cost, who now are going to get firmly hoofed in the balls, and will think why the **** did we bother in the first place.
Without wishing to be too political, but trying to fix our country's financial problems by taxing the living **** out of all of us without a single effort to actually try and grow the economy is beyond idiotic.
I mean they're not even trying to hide the blatant cash grab.
 
doing the right thing might be addressed by modifying ones luxury life elsewhere, a different pay per mile tax.
jpaul said:


A return flight from London to San Francisco emits around 5.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per person – more than twice the emissions produced by a family car in a year, and about half of the average carbon footprint of someone living in Britain. Even a return flight from London to Berlin emits around 0.6 tonnes CO2e – three times the emissions saved from a year of recycling.

And emissions from planes are rising rapidly – they increased by 32% between 2013 and 2018. While improving fuel efficiency is gradually reducing the emissions per passenger, it is not keeping up with the rapid increase in total passenger numbers, which are projected to double in the next 20 years.
so driving a bev as an environmental badge of honour is not a panacea
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Armageus said:
There was a definite bait and switch - when VED was based on CO2, you had manufacturers designing specifically designing cars (both Diesel and Petrol) to meet the £0 / £20 / £30 VED bands. Once it was realised that the majority of cars fell into those, the VED bands were changed again.


What about new cars that don't need an MOT?, what if I sell my car before the MOT? What about mileage done aboard that shouldn't be penalised over here?

It's not as simple as "herp derp mileage is getting captured at the mot"
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I don't believe they were retroactively changed though, so not sure who it would catch out.
 
Armageus said:
There was a definite bait and switch - when VED was based on CO2, you had manufacturers designing specifically designing cars (both Diesel and Petrol) to meet the £0 / £20 / £30 VED bands. Once it was realised that the majority of cars fell into those, the VED bands were changed again.
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my wife's pug 308 was an "eco" diesel. Even in 2023, a time when by then new diesel's were hit pretty hard in tax we still only paid £30ish quid a year tax on it, so I am not sure how anyone could say they were bait and switched if they had one of those.

not like EV drivers who were retroactively hit with almost £200 car tax from zero and it's now looking like an extra 3p per mile . they are being treated far worse than ice drivers have been imo. (assuming it's true and is happening...... am I right in saying it's still only rumours and leaks or is it official yet?).

forgetting the company car tax Dodgers for a second, a lot of us EV owners paid a significant premium over an ICE to get an EV and part of the sums used to make it work was the car tax and part was the daily cost of running.
 
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bigmike20vt said:
I know a couple of people without home charging. it's not ideal but it's possible. (my work offers 20p kWh charging so probably close to diesel cost per mile but only if no extra cost per mile tax) as for cost per mile tax in general ... Given I paid a probably £10,000 premium to have an EV over a similar ICE for each of our cars, justified in part because of cheaper running costs, I would say that is a lot of fuel tax before the EV breaks even.

once EVs are cost parity with ICE that is when it could maybe be bought in to level the paying field... maybe that is now for NEW cars but that is why it should be going forward not backwards (like I said they don't treat ice like that my wife's old "eco" diesel would still be £30ish had it not been written off
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You chose to drive a premium performance SUV which you got cheap due to heavy depreciation. You've been enjoying the unsustainable golden period of EV ownership. Now there is a duty being proposed that is still only 3/5 of that of an economical petrol car yet you feel that is unfair. So Barry the shelf stacker who drives a 15 year old Corsa should pay an extra 3p per mile on top of the 5p per mile in fuel duty he is already paying so you don't feel out out as you roll around in a 400bhp iPace.

I mean... I guess there is some logic hidden in there somewhere.

No one likes tax but anyone who bought into an EV long term and thought that 0 VED and 0 fuel duty was here to stay was living in fantasy land.
 
lordrobs said:
You chose to drive a premium performance SUV which you got cheap due to heavy depreciation. You've been enjoying the unsustainable golden period of EV ownership. Now there is a duty being proposed that is still only 3/5 of that of an economical petrol car yet you feel that is unfair. So Barry the shelf stacker who drives a 15 year old Corsa should pay an extra 3p per mile on top of the 5p per mile in fuel duty he is already paying so you don't feel out out as you roll around in a 400bhp iPace.

I mean... I guess there is some logic hidden in there somewhere.

No one likes tax but anyone who bought into an EV long term and thought that 0 VED and 0 fuel duty was here to stay was living in fantasy land.
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no my main point is it shouldn't be retrospective.
just like it hasn't been on old ICE cars so Barry would be fine .
going forward if it was a brand new ICE then sure.... how many shelf stackers are buying a brand new car? ICE or EV?
and yes it is an expensive car ... but we could still have gotten a similar ICE for far cheaper than what we paid for our ipace .

PS cost is relative. our car may have been cheap to you but I can assure you it wasn't for us. only my house costed more....

we need a large family car one way or another.... whether that is an ipace or an eniro doesn't make *that* much difference in terms of sustainability..... but what isn't sustainable are the planets co2 emissions (and I am not claiming superiority here either, I should do better as well!)
 
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adidan said:
Do you get CO2 credits for not producing children?
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The single biggest thing humans can do for the environment is not have children. They'll never give any benefit to you though because the government wants more bodies

You matter how much pollution you try to cut, no matter how many EVs you buy or solar panels you put on your roof it all pales in comparison to just having one less child
 
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