Taxation of alternative fuelled vehicles

I really dont know how you think its nonsense. They've been working for a few years now on a way that they could tax EVs on fuel. This is it. Im sure they are still working on refining it to get as many as possible into the net, but ability to record the juice that goes into the car remotely is the major hurdle that this solves. Granny charger will be the only way around it, but im sure they are working on that now too.

When they decide to start taxing electricity used in EVs in future, now it will be a simple task. Unless you think that they will never tax EV fuel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4nXOyScSEA

They already do, it's called VAT

Oh there will be more than VAT. You can be 100% sure of that.

Probably change to annual motor tax based on vehicle weight which is analogous to the old system of motor tax by engine capacity. Both don't follow the user pays principal like tax on fossil fuel does. Taxing use by mileage would be a headache and opens the door for a decent car clocking industry.

Between VAT, VRT and motor tax, the scum that decide to the tax the motorist so much need to turn their attention to accountability in public spending.

Make your own free, untaxable, zero emissions, 100% renewable fuel 😎

For now indeed. Until we get a usage based tax as per @liamog's post. That's years away though, I will have produced a lot of free clean untaxable fuel by then.

They can hardly charge a €500 fixed motor tax on clean zero emission EVs when they've put a €190-€280 fixed motor tax on cancer causing diesels for the last 15 years.

They're the Government, they can charge whatever they like.....

All that aside, there will be some way found to plug that tax gap. Using a blunt instrument like Motor Tax would be the easiest way. Otherwise, they could use all these new fangled "Smart" meters that are being installed to see what power is being used by a property at any one time. I doubt there are many appliances in a domestic setting that would have a constant, near 7kw power draw for 5 or 6 hours during the night. Even the worst of tumble dryers and washing machines would be half that draw and not for that length of time. Couple that with an EV being registered at the address and you have a formula for charging a higher tax for that usage.

You're right €2.5bn is not to be sneezed at and will be difficult to recover elsewhere. Can you imagine the uproar from large sections of the electorate if the Govt proposed an increase in electricity taxes to protect EV drivers.

Why wouldn't they seek to continue to recover from the motorist? I know some people think that EVs are different as they have zero tailpipe emissions but the reality is that private motoring was heavily taxed before we cottoned onto the possibility of gaining popular support for it by linking VRT, motor tax, fuel duty, carbon taxes to emissions. Its just about rebranding motor taxes and breathe life back into an old reliable.

I have paid maximum motor tax (sometimes as high as €1808 per year) in the past for many years for cars that did low mileages. I guess I am entitled to a wee break here 😂

I literally just said that it's less than 5% of the overall tax revenue, probably even lower now since excuse got slashed and other forms of tax are bringing in more revenue

I don't doubt there's going to be some form of taxation of EV ownership in the future. Motor tax rates will go up and it's divisive when someone who can barely afford a beat up Yaris is paying more tax than a Taycan owner

But the idea that the government is going to somehow build a massive surveillance system to monitor electricity usage and determine how much of that is being used to charge an EV is just ludicrous to me

This isn't China, our government doesn't have the desire, legal basis or technical resources to accomplish any of that

The only viable option I could see for an energy tax that targets EV charging would be to tax DC charging.

This could be possible because there is some truth to the argument that DC charging is bad for both the grid and the environment, since it involves additional use of gas fired power stations

After the switch from engine size based motor tax and VRT to CO2 based taxation back in 2008, the government almost immediately started to lose billions because everybody switched to cancerous, but low CO2 diesels.

Interestingly, these taxes were never increased and the government made up for the shortfall from other taxes

Yes but what a success when the policy target was to reduce CO2 emissions!! And what a boom for the 520D!

With the removal of most pre 2008 cars from the roads and the accelerated transition to EVs, unless there is another policy reset shortly car taxes will virtually disappear, can't see that happening in Ireland. Will it be another balls up.. watch this space

Yes but just because motor tax is not hypoteticated does not mean that it doesn't contribute to funding road maintenance. Reality is it forms part of the total tax revenue used to fund public expenditure including road maintemance. Reducing motor tax means other taxes have to be increased to support expenditure including the cost of road maintenance.

I think the issue with the transition to EVs is that the link between use of the roads and cost to the motorist is being greatly erroded. Currently with taxation making up approx 50% of the price of fiuel, their is a strong link between road usage and tax revenue, the more you drive the more you contribute to the upkeep of the roads. This is particularly the case with private motorists who can't write off the costs of motoring, whereas self-employed / business can claim vat back and write off cost of fuel against income, thereby eroding their contribution to the cost of maintaining the roads they use. I live in a rural area and I always hate to see newly surfaced roads torn up by massive agri vehicles exiting from fields onto the road, especially during warm summer weather. I suppose its no worse that seeing utility companies dig up newly surfaced urban roads.

In any case certainly increased road tolls would increase the link between road use and cost to the motorist and would apply to all categories of road users including EVs

I don't think they'll be ignored but they will take a long time to have material effect, probably more like 20 years

Dubious savings it has to be said.

Our EV's are substantially powered from fossil fuels anyway.

Mined from the ground using diesel, the road they drive on is build and maintained, using diesel.

When one gets stuck on the side of the road, it's diesel that gets us home.

Would thatatne have been influenced by the fac that modern diesels are actually pretty clean?

However, the Govt did introducea Nox levy for private motorists to ensure that older and more dirty diesels would no longer be imported from UK unless of course it was commercial which could continue to be imported and chug awaye

As far as I'm aware, and I am open to correction on this, existing roads can't be tolled under EU rules, only new ones... In saying that the UK, while part of the EU, introduced "congestion charges" on existing roads in London and Durham so I'm thinking this fact might not apply

In terms of tax per km, all new cars have emergency calling which requires GPS and a phone SIM. Indirectly they all have some sort of position logging system and so in theory it would be possible in 10/15 years for all cars to report the location and distances driven over mobile phone l, which could be used for a city and rural per km tax.

Existing smart meters report usage every 3 minutes and existing systems "guess" and report usage on websites such as washing machine, lighting etc, just based on usage data without knowing exactly what was turned on. While people could bypass esb meters, very few do, so it works good enough.

General motor tax or vrt or fixed annual taxes work well in terms of they are easy to collect, don't vary and so are predictable and they often don't help reduce consumption, as in I have paid my 1000 euro motor tax why take the bus instead I should drive to local sweet shop for the newspaper.

As said we used to tax based on engine size, which created odd engine sizes such as 1.999 litre instead of 2L, and small engines with unusually high power outputs and now engines designed to produce low emissions during a fixed test but still produce high performance during hard pedal pressed. I laugh at saying we now have clean diesel, while emissions are not measured while the DPF is regenerating and burning off soot. It's like measuring a humans CO2 while they hold their breadth.

The green party seems anti car even EV, and ideally we want people driving small efficient EVs and charging overnight on green power. We also want cars to last a long time. Fixed annual costs like motor tax are not great to reduce number of driving trips. Time of purchase taxes like vrt can help encourage people to buy the better cars such as small and EV.

Usage such as diesel taxes do encourage people to switch to EV where usage costs are less. .

It's also a political issue, targeting rural Ireland, targeting low income commuters, targeting rich EV owners such as the hate towards big BMW SUV drivers or those buying 100k EVs getting supported.

Politicians are very careful to not stick their foot in it or blame "Europe"