Electric car drivers in the UK must pay tax from 2025 | Hacker News Reader

Electric car drivers in the UK must pay tax from 2025

bbc.com

20 pointshhs15 comments

I think this is a good thing. Cars still have externalities beyond carbon and air pollution. Some combination of cost and weight might be nice to take into account so expensive SUVs pay more.

Considering such a large amount of a cars pollution comes from tyres and break dust it's true.

CO2 is our largest concern at the moment. Pollution from brake dust and tire dust isn't as important even if it's a large amount.

Break dust is way less of an issue with electric cars anyway, if they have regen-braking. Don't know how that'd be taxed proportionally though.

I'm also living in a country where road tax is priced per CO2 emission rating (used to be by displacement pre-2006), and am sad nobody's selling kits to capture some or all of the CO2 emissions from exhaust.

Brake dust is less of an issue, but tyre dust is arguably worse (since EVs are near-unavoidably heavier than ICE equivalents).

If only the cost of VED actually balanced out the damage done by vehicles!

I can't picture this being much of a big deal. Sounds like we'd be talking about going from £0 yearly to £165. Electric cars already cost well into the tens of thousands. Very few people are going to balk at paying that little tax for a car that cost them 500x that. And what's the alternative? You buy a petrol/diesel, you'd pay the same.

For reference, see the tax band tables below: https://www.gov.uk/vehicle-tax-rate-tables

> The RAC motoring group said it did not expect the change to dampen demand for electric vehicles (EVs).

How could they believe there will be no marginal effect from this change? If the policy was to have no effect, why was it introduced in the first place?

You can argue that the effect will be small; you can argue that, even though it exists, that the new policy is more fair or otherwise better. It seems to defy fundamental economics to think or argue that making a certain type of car more expensive than it currently is won't have some dampening effect on demand for that type of car.

Policies are not for having an effect. They are for creating an impression, especially when it comes to unprofitable things like the environment.

Is there any decision in a replacement for fuel tax?

Fuel tax is 'worth' a lot more than car tax (VED) for the typical motorist in the UK.

And taxing electricity for use in cars is much harder logistically.

Public charging has a 20% VAT instead of 5% for home electricity. This is a bit unfair to people who can't have a charger at home.

Also, the Benefit In Kind (BIK) tax is rising from the current 2% to 3%, 4%, 5% over the next three years.

On a £40k car, this means the assessed benefit will rise from £800 to £2000 over three years. For a 40% tax payer, this means an increase from £320 to £800pa. Half that for a 20% tax payer, obviously.

Given most new EV registrations are corporate and may attract BIK, this will possibly cost the average EV owner more than the £165pa road tax increase.

It makes sense, everyone will do it.

When the technology is mature, cut back subsidies.

Fair enough, as if it wasn't bad enough that everyone not buying these expensive cars (mostly poorer people) is paying subsidies to people who buy them (mostly rich people), while it should be vice versa or at very least nobody should subsidize anyone buying luxury items.

Thanks to our idiotic far-right government's financial blunders, it's too expensive to charge an electric car anyway.

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