Pay per Mile?

[Whoppa Choppa]

I am the biggest EV sceptic out there. But that's not my point here.

Just stumbled upon this.

What y'all think?

 

https://youtu.be/-876kuUmnLQ

[Steven P]

Only watched part of the video, once I thought "He looks a lot like Mr Bean", I couldn't take him seriously.

 

Essentially the video is 'pay per mile' is coming.. which to be honest is no surprise. Fuel duty is a kind of tax like that anyway, the more we drive, the more fuel we use, the more tax we pay.

 

If we all get Electric vehicles in 2035? or within 5 years after, the government won't be getting any tax revenue from fuel (about £25 billion in 2022/23 though it has peaked at about £28 billion) . That is a lot of lost revenue isn't it. So where to make up the shortfall - has to be from drivers I think. If you add the tax to electricity in the traditional tax-road-fuel model then this becomes a "being in poverty tax" since that is the demographic who don't have cars but would have to pay anyway.

 

So what to do? I think pence per mile is the fairest way. There might be a period of pain where there is a cross over (petrol car paying petrol taxes plus pence per mile for example, but electric car will only pay pence per mile). Domestic users might be winners, charge at home for short journeys. Business and heavy users might lose out a bit having to use commercial charging sockets away from home. Over all though, so long as the tax take is about the same I don't think we will be better or worse off.