EV tax dilemma

Taxing EVs to help pay for roads has been talked about in New Zealand and Australia with road user charges (RUC) suggested, especially as the fuel tax for such purposes drops with more efficient and lower emission vehicles around.

Now Isle of Man EV owners face a similar prospect, with a new tax on EVs there to be introduced from April – and it’s not an April Fool’s joke.

Presently untaxed zero emission vehicles will be subject to a 14 pounds charge (A$26.22, NZ$27.26), infrastructure minister Ray Harmer told Tynwald – the legislature of the Isle of Man.

Harmer says the tax is necessary as the amount collected from petrol and diesel vehicles will “rapidly decrease over the next 10 years”, the BBC

reports.

“We all know that we need to move to a new environment with electric vehicles and electric heaters and so forth, but we also have to raise vehicle duty to maintain our roads, so it is a difficult balance,” Harmer says.

“The highways need to be repaired and we need money to do that.”

But the Isle of Man Green Party says the tax is “a retrograde step”, removing many incentives to EV ownership.

Similar arguments against such a charge have been voiced in New Zealand and Australia too, the Electric Vehicle Council Australia and others panning it.

The Isle of Man has 280 EVs and 706 hybrid vehicles registered.

Its government has pledged to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2040 to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Further EV duty charge details for the island are expected in February.