IPA wants to hit EVs with road tax “before they appear in every driveway”

Infrastructure Partnerships Australia has stunned the nascent electric vehicle industry in Australia by suggesting that EVs be immediately hit with a road user charge, and has modelled a fee of 4c a kilometre, or about $800 a year based on 20,000kms travelled.

The proposal, in a new report released on Thursday – just a day before a key meeting of state and federal transport ministers – suggests that fuel excise revenue – which currently gathers around $11.3 billion a year – could “fall off a cliff’ if the uptake of EVs suddenly accelerates from its current low levels.

The lobby group wants the road user charge targeted exclusively at full battery electric vehicles, but not plug in hybrids or other fuel efficient cars, or any car that has an internal combustion engine.

And the new tax should be introduced now, says IPA chief executive Adrian Dwyer, “before there is an electric car in every driveway.”

The EV industry says a road tax is inevitable. However, it says it should be aimed at all vehicles, not just EVs, particularly as petrol and diesel cars bear no cost of their impacts on health and emissions.

The think tank is singling out EVs as the culprit, even though its own data shows that fuel excise revenue per kilometre has declined by one third over the last decade. That’s due to the gradual improvement in efficiency, and despite the fact that Australia is one of the few western countries not to have fuel efficiency standards.

To read the full article, please go to our EV-focused sister site, The Driven.io

Comments

6 responses to “IPA wants to hit EVs with road tax “before they appear in every driveway””

  1. lin Avatar
    lin

    Any chance of them arguing for recovery of the $0.15/km cost to the healthcare system for pollution from ICE vehicles?

  2. Maddogeco Avatar
    Maddogeco

    What about a tire tax. all vehicles have tyres. The more you drive the more you wear out your tires. And it might discourage bogans from doing burn outs

  3. Michael Murray Avatar
    Michael Murray

    Ah not the IPA I was expecting. But equally as stupid.

  4. Miles Harding Avatar
    Miles Harding

    I do agree that some sort of EV usage tax is inevitable, but now is completely the wrong time to be proposing it. The country desperately needs to reduce both its GHG emissions and dependence on imported fossil fuels before one or both of these causes a major problem.

    I’d describe this as the usual greedy rent seeking bustards looking for a way to get the EV-hating LNP to raise more road tax so they can build more tunnels and line their pockets with the tolls.

  5. Ken Fabian Avatar
    Ken Fabian

    Ah, the Taxation is Theft crowd want to raise taxes to alter people’s purchasing choices? The IPA that deplores Pigovian taxation want a Pigovian tax that inhibits takeup of EV’s – but will, because BS is their product, promote it as “fairness” to ICE drivers and not about impeding a transition to low emissions. They are unprincipled hacks, churning out justifications and excuses and distractions for their sponsors; it does not surprise me at all that they can put aside their ideological objections to taxation when it is imposed on things their sponsors don’t like.

    This looks to me like an example of tribal payback, a counter thrust aimed at those that call for carbon pricing. For those who deny climate science and support coal and gas and oil unquestioningly – as an expression of tribal loyalty – the technologies that are part of climate solutions get framed as expressions of loyalty by their tribal enemies rather than as rational choices – and seen as legitimate targets for attack purely for that reason, irrespective of their merits. Even more reason to do so when the technology works, is being taken up in increasing numbers purely on merit and like solar power, will be taken up by people from their own tribe.

  6. Pragmatist Avatar

    Due to the weight of EVs being generally more than the equivalent ICE counterpart EVs are already paying extra tax. Based on this calc, In an EV If i do 15000km per year I would pay $600 per year. If I were to pay for petrol for that today I’l pay ~$1575 (~$1.50p/l, ~7L per km), that would be $430 in excises before other taxes etc. Since EVs already pay more for rego, now paying more tax per km as well… Easier to keep a ICE car and keep global warming and peoples health poor.

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