Hi Everyone,
This was just announced an hour ago (link below)
https://www.caradvice.com.au/903101/victoria-to-tax-electric…
Seems to me like we are going backwards. Now Victoria and SA are the only 2 states in the world with these rules.
What do you guys thing? is this the right direction?
It's about tax revenue, government earns tax dollars in the form of excise tax on fossil fuels, tobacco and alcohol.
A motorist that buys fuel from the petrol station ends up paying a little bit of that tax
If, in the far flung future, if most cars on the road isn't burning fuel but are running entirely on electricity the government isn't collecting as much tax, so they've introduced this as a way to collect revenue from motorists. The more you drive, the more taxes you pay.
government earns tax dollars in the form of excise tax on fossil fuels, tobacco and alcohol.
Then pay for hospitals and pensions of people impacted by bad health. It is complicated but the people always pay.
Higher Medical bill / insurance for fat people? Hell yes.
If Smoker pays higher health insurance, I don't see why Overweight people should not pay more.
Obesity has a very detrimental impact on bones, ligaments, back and cardio vascular system. ( Think heart attack and diabetes )
@cameldownunder: Even better have everyone genetically tested and those predisposed to a condition pay even more.
@cameldownunder: Higher medical bill for people that ride motorcycles or ride horses then? I've been fat a long time but have never had a hospital stay. Plenty of my friends that play a lot of sports just about have their own hospital beds.
In other words, shut up.
In other words, shut up.
Oh boo-hu, did I hurt your feelings?.
ride motorcycles or ride horses then?
Yes, they are, if they have listed their activities. Those are high risk sports, and attract higher fees.
I've been fat a long time but have never had a hospital stay.
Yes, because you don't move. But that does not make you healthy. Probably clogged arteries and thin as paper because of sugar eating away at it. High blood pressure and pain in all joints, especially the back. My guess
I am unsure 😐 but isn’t electricity taxed? If so why not allocate a portion of that to maintaining roads? I mean electric vehicles 🚗 do purchase electricity ⚡️ to run them right?
Increase tax on all electricity or just the electricity that goes into cars?
Also, the tax on petrol is way higher than the GST.
That would increase the cost of electricity for everyone, not just motorists. That also means you pay more for your household electricity.
Remember, the goal of this is to collect tax dollars from people driving cars — money which is then spent on building or maintaining roads. The people who aren't driving don't need to subsidize. This new system taxes the motorist based on the distance they've driven — measured by the kilometer, which is a lot easier to measure because every car has an odometer.
@scrimshaw: Increase electricity for all.
It's fairer as the hit for EV owners is lessened, so there is an incentive to move from ICE and reduce emissions. Also 100% of electricity users also use the roads, either directly (walking, riding, driving) and/or indirectly having goods sent to their house, their neighbors, or for their local stores to stock up with goods and services.
Either way, government spending should go down/better efficiency, public transport needs to drastically increase, fuel prices should stay same, rego and insurance should go up slightly, electricity should subside EVs, electricity should go down (corruption/we're being ripped off).
@scrimshaw: It's trucks that do most of the road damage, so the people who aren't driving, eating food grown more than 5km away, or receiving any mail don't need to subsidize.
It's not a bad idea, it's just 10 years too early. when we're looking at 50% of the cars on the road pure plug in or plugin hybrid perhaps then we should start talking.
They need to remove the luxury car tax on EV also, it's the technology which is expensive, not the typical luxury vehicle.
This was always going to happen in some form. The revenue from fuel excise is in the billions. As more cars move away from fuel they need to find those dollars from somewhere else.
And they could never find it by charging polluters more could they
No, we definitely need to charge the people who aren't f*&^ing the planet /s
Right? It's not that this tax isn't the end result of everyone switching to electric vehicles, because it probably is. It's that we are way too early into the switch to electric vehicles to be creating a distinctive to switch from petrol to electric. The few electric vehicles on the road are probably barely making a dent in fuel excise tax revenue at this stage. If anything, fuel excise taxes should be increased over the next 10 years to make up the difference and incentivise the switch to electric. Once the ball is rolling on electric, only then start taxing it. This just seems like a poorly thought through plan with little foresight.
I would be fine with this if they added in-road charging everywhere so your car charges as you drive. Then that's fair enough.
Seems fair to me - electric vehicles should contribute to roads. Paying per km (ie by use) is exactly how ICE cars are charged for using the road.
except they're not really. The fuel excise doesn't accurately reflect the vehicle road use. A hybrid like a Prius uses hardly any fuel compared to an older car- but their fuel excise cost per km isn't equal. Plenty of hauling businesses get their fuel tax credits back- and heavy vehicles cause loads more road damage than regular civilian cars. So currently the fuel tax being a road use tax isn't an accurate reflection of road use.
I also am wary of the mentality of "user pays".
Our shared resources like roads, health care and public transport are funded by all of us- for all of us. Country people grumble a lot about how their taxes don't get them much for their dollar, and its a good point, but I think the goal of all of us paying for the resources stops us going down a slippery slope of privatisation of these shared resources.
Its always been user pays. The fact that you can nitpick examples where it is not exactly fair doesn't change the basic fact that most road users pay according to use… more-or-less.
If you don't like user pay road changes, where were your arguments that fuel excise shouldn't be levied? What makes electric vehicles special that they should pay NOTHING beyond registration?
Well, think its definitely important and inevitable that EV's pay for road use.
However, right now australia is a tough market for convincing people to buy EV's and the usage case for EV's in australia a hard sell, expensive up front cost, limited range for country Australians, and this will just make it harder when we need to be accelerating this change.
My pitch would be to go the other way, make it attractive to buy an EV, with additional perks like ACT's recent incentives, and when we have market saturation of maybe 10%? or 20%?
This shortfall in road cost could be addressed?
@RelaxandSax: EVs already have fuel and servicing cost advantages. But most of all, EVs drivers claim to be doing it for environmental reasons, so isn't that enough? Even if the cost was identical, it should still be attractive, right?
See I think a lot of people are being disingenuous. What people want (much like solar power) is for it to be cheaper. The environmental benefit is a distant second for many owners.
@RelaxandSax: I agree and disagree.
EV's are an easy market for Australia. We have lower population, mostly dense cities, lots of sun, and decent spread of land for infrastructure.
Just allow those who are in the middle-class (owns 1 house outright) to be able to get a large solar panel, a large battery, and EV for a very affordable price. And have very affordable super-charging stations all over the major cities, plus along waypoints between major routes (eg ADL to MEL to ACT to SYD to Sunshine Coast to Cairns). Should only take 1 year, 2 years tops for the station installations. Ideally this would've started in 2010, at the start of the EV market, but 2015 seems more reasonable, however it's 2020 we haven't started yet… so better late than never I guess.
Allow the market to saturate 35% of all cars. Then look at removing/reducing the subsidies. But in all of this, we can't make conditions difficult for those in the lower classes relying on current ICE transportation. Also not to abandon the move to increase efficiency further by reducing Public Transport costs and increasing it's services and adoption. That's how we advance in transportation efficiency, take a page out of Norway's playbook.
@Kangal: Lol what? You want to effectively make poor people who can't afford a house or EV subsidise middle class EV/property owners. Genius plan.
@lunchbox99: Lol, that is definitely not it. I think I failed to explain it properly.
-Poor people already have, and should get, other benefits like low/no taxation, centrelink help, and access to all our public utilities. Initially people in this bracket should only buy ICEs, ones that are cheap or used. Early EVs are obviously not recommended due to price, availability, and early-adopter (unknown) issues.
-The really rich people, they have and continue to enjoy the fruits of their social status, these people are not the target of the subsidies.
-Yet those that are comfortable but not quite rich (ie upper-middle class), those people who can and do purchase brand new vehicles. Yes, those people should be heavily incentivised to buy EV instead of ICE.
And the incentives should kick off from the start of the EV conversion of the market, eg if started in 2010 then upto 2020, and slowly weaned out. Incentives should be such as: no stamp duty, no rego fees, discounted insurance and cheap electricity for owners. The idea is that the rich will do as they please, whilst the middle-class will be primed for this greener shift. The lower 65% of the population, well EVs will get more and more available, they will get cheaper and cheaper. Plus eventually (2025-2030) as the initial EVs bought by the upper-middle class age, and these people upgrade to new EV models, these used (but completely fine) EVs should be snapped up by those who are poorer. And going this way, we should be able to hit 51% of EVs on the road in a much faster (2030-2035) yet fairer means.
Ideally we would have a business that buys great condition ICE vehicles, and converts them to EVs, but I found this idea actually not feasible in real-world conditions. So we have to wait to "junk" these old and new ICE vehicles, recycle their raw materials, and produce EVs from scratch, as it is the simpler and more controllable means.
Maybe a better description would be "users pay" instead as the cost is averaged across all users.
A car that uses 5.5L per 100km does not pay as much excise as a car that uses 7.7L per 100km. They don't pay more tax. They pay less tax. They use the same roads.
I look forward to your arguments about how somebody in a Toyota Echo should pay an additional tax while somebody in V6 Falcodore should get a medal.
Whatever they pay is more than zero, which is what EVs currently pay.
Absolutely bonkers! I hope the greens give Dan and co hell for this. It is super frustrating, especially when:
It also comes in the same week the Australian Capital Territory government promised to introduce free registration and interest-free loans for new electric-car buyers.
Now Victoria and SA are the only 2 states in the world with these rules.
Don't stress, more will be sure to follow..
One thing that is unclear, how are they going to monitor it? and how often would it need to be payed?
I can only guess it will be monitored at rego time, otherwise not sure how they could do it efficiently.
The time will come when all electric vehicles will have computer chips installed to monitor the distance traveled, and which will need to be download at time of rego. renewal. A similar cost/distance model is already employed by some insurers for car insce.
already have.. most electric car can have a laptop plugged in to do the diagnosis.
all they need is to allow the data to feed through the charging station and then transmit them to some where
Wow. So ..
43c per litre or … 2.5c per km
My Prius C at 4.5L/100km works out less in excise than an electric car. Now .. all I need is my diy oil drill and refinery
Also don't forget the cost of charging that said EV or PHEV.
Exactly. I don't live in Victoria, but this is absolutely daft. If they wanted to be fair, make everyone pay a per-kilometre charge and dump the fuel excise.
Are they going to charge the same fee for electric motorcycles? You'd end up paying twice as much as someone riding their Grom to work.
It's really just a tax to make sure everyone drives non plug in hybrids.
They can't dump fuel excise because it is a federal tax, isn't?
May be they should charge a tax on the battery size, as this would be comparable to a fuel excise
$2.50 per 100km. Plus the cost to charge. Pretty crappy deal. Lots of people going to be winding back odometers.
How many coders can crack the encryption on a Tesla?
There generally isn't that complex an encryption. Its normally stored on non volatile memory. You read that memory, drive the car, then read it again and see where it has changed.
80-bit encryption is a joke.
Supercharge cost up, road use cost up and weak encryption. What are owners paying for again?
@whooah1979: That's it. Really taking the shine off electric cars. I'm actually mildly interested in replacing my Passat with one in a few years, the screen in the model 3 is disgusting though, and this style of tax will make it a much harder sell.
@brendanm: It's still less than ICE cars pay. In any case, I thought people were doing this for the environmental benefits, not as a money making scheme.
@whooah1979: I'm sorry, are EVs primarily marketed as a financial investment or an environmental investment?
Look, I get it. You own one and thought you could pay nothing to use roads.
Look, I get it. You own one and thought you could pay nothing to use roads.
You know what they say about assumption?
@brendanm: Mate you literally said above that you thought this was taxing solar power you generated yourself. It's not. You seem to be backing away from that premise now that it's obviously not what is being proposed.
@brendanm: You know this thread has become boring. Pay your share of tax EV moochers, lol.
But as requested, here is what you said:
The ev doesn't burn petrol. The owner may be charging it from their own solar panels, creating no emissions. Yet they are charged for running something they own, with panels they own, from the sun?
As EV or Hybrid vehicles are dearer than ICE variants, there is already a significant tax payment made via a higher GST.
Although this collected federally, it's eventually redistributed to states anyway. So extra taxes, such as in SA & Vic. are going to be a considerable disincentive to purchase EVs, which will make it harder for the country to reach emission targets.
But significantly lower tax through fuel excise. I think if you look at whole-of-life running costs and the taxation component in particular, EVs are currently getting a much better deal.
They should be. They're not contributing to global warming in anything like the same way.
Well true but they aren't as green as a lot of people think. The energy and emissions that go into the creation and disposal of an EV battery are fairly significant, but largely invisible to the end user (not that I'm suggesting they are bad overall).
@lunchbox99: Do you have any scientific data that actually supports the notion that EV batteries are costly (in a figurative sense) to produce and dispose of? Because from what I have seen, the lifespan on an EV battery in it's multiple lives means that recycling isn't even on the agenda right now. Old batteries will just be used for home energy storage.
@[Deactivated]: Mining, refining and manufacturing lithium battery technology is both energy intensive and environmentally damaging. It is objective fact. All that is in question is whether it's better whole-of-life than burning fossil fuel.
The consensus seems to be that yes it is better, but don't fool yourself that it doesn't cost anything, environmentally speaking.
And lithium batteries cannot last forever due to the inherent chemistry, so at some point it must be recycled, which is both energy intensive and polluting.
Here is a decent introduction:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_aspects_of_the_e…
Also read the following section about sustainability of raw material acquisition.
@lunchbox99: You appear to be overlooking the fact that lithium can be recycled and reused in batteries after they reach EOL (maybe 25 years).
@[Deactivated]: You mean where I specifically mention recycling? It uses both energy and produces toxic chemicals.
An EV battery with current technology will lose a LOT of capacity well before 25 years, which is why no warranty goes beyond 10 years. Not to mention that an old battery is significantly less safe (propensity to catch fire).
@lunchbox99: Yeah, current EV batteries have a life of about 500,000km. The next generation which is in production now/soon has a life of at least 1,000,000km. After that the packs can be used for home storage for another decade/couple of decades.
@[Deactivated]: I don't want to sound like I'm against EVs or battery technology. I think they are a great idea and will eventually be more efficient.
I just get annoyed when people (not you) try to tell me that buying an EV is somehow not producing any negative effects on the environment. it is simply not true.
@lunchbox99: Yeah but the net positive compared to an ICE vehicle is irrefutable. The environment will be better off when everyone is driving EVs.
@lunchbox99: Not true. There's a number of Teslas for example that have driven this kind of mileage with quite low degradation. Some of the testing being done on current generation Tesla batteries are indicating they might have a cycle as long as 3 million kilometres which is why the "million mile battery" thing isn't getting talked about - it's already here.
Probably none of us are going to drive a car anywhere near 3M kilometres, so a secondary market will arise around the re-use of these cells in household battery storage and other applications where kWh/kg isn't as much of a big deal.
However, even if it were only 500,000km… that's 30 years of driving for the average person. I really don't know how many car owners are going to be shaking their fists after half a million km that their battery didn't meet expectations. Taxi drivers (or robo taxis if you want to go that way) are potentially the exception and will want a longer guarantee or stronger evidence that 1M+ is probable.
We should all care about the recyclability, and the fact is that the battery cells and packs are a precious commodity and will be highly sought after for some time.
@apiecost: Well that's great and obviously a positive but all it does is delay the problem. Different manufacturers use different battery chemistry, which makes mixed recycling difficult.
We should all care about the recyclability, and the fact is that the battery cells and packs are a precious commodity and will be highly sought after for some time.
Agreed.
Ultimately regulations should require manufacturers to recycle their batteries at EOL. Currently the costs of disposal/recycling are not factored into the price, and they should be.
@lunchbox99: I believe that these articles can be of interest:
https://www.ipoint-systems.com/blog/lca-of-lithium-ion-batte…
More ev means more revenue for the state and more services for the rest of us.
Happy days.
Whelp, looks like my electric vehicle would be getting the odometer disconnected… :D
For a side reference, fuel excise on ULP is $0.423/litre. An average car runs about 8km/litre. Fuel excise on a average petrol vehicle would be about $0.053 (5.29¢) per km.
Oh, and “iT’z JuSt rEvEnUe rAiSiNg!!1!1”
My prediction is that there will be a heap of EV’s being sold in years to come in these states that after 5~10 years, it will be 10km on the odometer…
My prediction is EVs will have a tiny ICE installed to reclassify them as PHEV for the 0.5c savings.
Really this tax is just encouraging hybrids at the expense of full EV and especially PHEV. This has basically killed the real PHEV market.
Its way too early to be taxing EVs.
If you drive to work normally and then drive in reverse all the way home does the odometer return to its original position?
I think you might be onto something here.
Disgusting revenue raising.
I've heard governments are also missing out on revenue from people who quit smoking or drinking. Perhaps they should also tax alternatives to those items?
Maybe they should just more efficiently spend the money that we already pay in taxes?
The most obvious solution, that is always forgotten. This would require intelligent solutions, and intelligent decisions. Also would probably end all the tenders going to their mates, and we can't have that.
Or stop giving tax exemptions/credits for unproductive stuff like land banking and rent seeking. And maybe start to tax big buisnesses properly.
except with smoking and drinking the costs are significantly higher than the revenue gained. Eventually all EV's will be taxed, we may be the first but we definitely won't be the last, this is being heavily debated all through Europe and The US as well. fuel excise pays for roads and other services, if you reduce that someone has to pay. Initially EV's are subsidized but as EV use increases that is not a viable option and they have to start paying for what they use.
fuel excise pays for roads and other services
Read the article in the OP. Fuel excise is just a tax that goes to (federal) consolidated revenue. The federal government currently spends about 40-50% of what is received from fuel excise on transport infrastructure, etc, nationally, but is not required to and they are not actually linked.
Seems more like the Vic gov just trying to get their hands on more tax dollars without being reliant on the federal middle man.
I am aware of that, I don't see how that should exclude EV's for having to pay. The simple fact is it is a tax cut and one that will only go to those rich enough to afford EV's (FYI my household has 2 ICE's, but replacing one with an EV early next year so I am not just arguing against something that doesn't affect me). I just don't see any valid justification to give a select group tax breaks, especially in the current financial climate.
@gromit: The absence of taxable activity isn't a 'tax break'. This is essentially the argument here.
That is some backward thinking. While other countries are subsidising electrical vehicles to help meet their emission targets, here we are taxing people for owning it.
Though with how expensive electricity is in Australia, electrical vehicles were never that attractive to me to begin with
Except that they want cleaner air on cities and EVs are a great way to do that. They are penalising a method of cleaning the air.
Air seems pretty clean to me, except for the minority of old diesel utes and trucks and buses
Just because you can’t see it. Ever seen the air in Sydney after a couple of calm sunny days? Sky is brown on the horizon.
Very surprising out of Victoria, however given the debt and way the states been run in to the ground this year they need to try and screw everyone they can for a few more dollars.
It's a shame, it will have an impact on people's views of EV for quite some time to come and for sure make people far more wary of the fact this tax will be increased as they need to.
Even though excise is paid via fuel I can see a congestion tax or tax based on km driven for ICE vehicles happening on top.
I think there needs to be a huge review of exactly how our money is being spent and waste addressed, we all have to budget and spend within our means, as should they.
Can’t they put a 40c tax per KW on EV chargers apart from house hold ones?
Lol, this would make it $5 on tax, plus the cost of the electricity, per 100km, on the most efficient model 3. More expensive than a diesel of similar size.
@brendanm - As more people switch to EV and commute more. This would increase revenue for the government.
For your average EV owner, 2.5c per km isn’t going to make a difference financially. It does rub the wrong way when the government puts an unfair tax.
I am based in Sydney and our roads suck. I seriously can’t see how our tax dollars are being spent on upgrading roads properly. Many other countries have much better roads and lower overall taxes.
This is couruption it seems like to me. We don't want to poison our air anymore yet the Richie's make it hard for us to switch. The world needs a revaluation.
How will they tax km’s on a electric car? Curious minds and all
The odometer is read every time the rego is renewed.
EV charge points, surely those collect VIN, ODO, Range and other information. I mean if a basic phone app wants all of the permissions it can try take a EV charge point would do the same.
For Teslas via superchargers I'd expect it would be happening with even more data being involved like firmware and other stuff.
Or just an odometer read at rego time plus upon disposal/sale.
Can't trust people, VIC doesnt do annual vehicle inspections either so no time to pull it then with someone who could be trusted a little more.
Time between disposal or sale would be too long, they'd want it annually or more frequently.
New Zealand do it annually with a prepaid license or credits ln 1000km blocks at $76 (cheapest and up from there). - Only for commercial vehicles over 3.5t or Diesels.
You can't drive without having purchased those credits, difference is every year a vehicle gets a WOF (warrant of fitness) where driven kms are recorded.
https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/licensing-rego/road-user-c…
$2.5/100km is more than I currently pay in excise for my Honda (5.8L/100km). This tax is very high.
I'm not opposed to EV's paying taxes when they have an impact on tax revenue, but right now they are a tiny minority of vehicles.
Besides, what price do you put on clean air? Exhaust emissions have direct health costs in the form of respiratory disease. Surely the EV tax should reflect these savings.
$2.5/100km is more than I currently pay in excise for my Honda (5.8L/100km). This tax is very high.
Well by your own account its roughly equivalent to one of the lowest ICE cars on the market, so it's actually "very low". Virtually everyone else currently driving a vehicle pays more (which is fine as an incentive to go EV).
Lol, why is this downvoted? Poor babies can't handle facts?
5.8L attracts $2.494 of fuel excise. So you are paying equivalent to a car with approx 6L/100km, which is objectively at the lower end of the curve in terms of car models sold in Australia, and well and truly at the lowest end by actual vehicles sold ie most vehicles sold have worse mileage and would pay higher fuel excise per km.
I'm super confused, the trend worldwide is to increase the number of electric cars in use. Why are Victoria and South Australia trying to slow down/stop that trend?