Thread: Future of the Australian Electricity Market

Originally Posted by havabeer69

It'll be interesting how the take the fuel excise tax and apply it to EV

can only assume it'll just be a big slug onto your rego.

Don't know. Fuel Excise is a Fed tax, and Rego is State, so they may need some other way through. I suspect there will have to be a substantial rethink on some (or many) aspects of taxation.

Originally Posted by FenceFurniture

Don't know. Fuel Excise is a Fed tax, and Rego is State, so they may need some other way through. I suspect there will have to be a substantial rethink on some (or many) aspects of taxation.

So right. They will have to do a really big re-think.

If you add up the total taxes collected by both state and federal governments from cars - import duties, fuel tax and rego - you get a big number which is about twice what the governments collectively spend on road construction and maintenance. ie Cars are a significant part of geberal taxation.

And electric vehicles, at the moment, are about subsidies rather than taxation.

A real big think is needed, and must happen.

Whatever tax formula they come up with will have to take into account that there will still be a very large percentage of heavy vehicles using diesel, the EV cars/bikes/light trucks that charge off the existing grid, BUT how do you arrive at a formula for those who are NOT on the grid and have their own self sufficient system and charge their EV's off that.

All good questions, Ray.

And I think that is critical - they are questions.

The element of general taxation on vehicles is so ubiquitous, I do not think they can do the taxing largely through electricity tariffs - a total re-think will be necessary.

There are State taxes in fuel as well.

Ray I don’t think they will care if your EV is self sufficient. I think the government just wants general tax revenue and the way they went about it with ICE cars will need to change so they dont miss out when the trend changes
They will get us one way or another

I agree Beardy but tax's is the only real source of income any gov't has to pay for their lifestyle and what they dribble out to us, but my point is how do you develop a taxing formula that is at face value equatable and not onerous for any particular section of the transport/commuter population. This scenario needs to be worked/researched/developed on now as what ever system is implemented will also have a profound effect on the type/size of vehicle that will be purchased as well as what the manufacturer is prepared to invest in and market.

Perhaps it will be simple?

Do it at rego time, one must report Kms travelled if electric and one is charged $c/Km

??

Whereas taxes are collected at the pump for piston vehicles, electric ones (manually) report their travels monthly/quarterly, just like we get our electricity bills now? Pay monthly/quaterly/yearly....

No doubt the Ze Gov will compel EVs to use some sort of automated data reporting (via inbuilt 3/4/5G)*



* I have a 3G/4G tracking and immobiliser now in the car, which uses a $10 per year Amaysim SIM and SMS. Its pretty nifty. The link is an example. I can send it SMS commands to immobilise and it sends SMS if it goes outside a pre-set perimeter.

Victoria already charges ev owners by the km
EV at 2.6c and plug in hybrids @2.1c.
Self declared with reg renewal.
"to compensate for loss of petrol tax"

Although they still kindly offer $100 annual rego discount..

Originally Posted by russ57

Victoria already charges ev owners by the km
EV at 2.6c and plug in hybrids @2.1c.
Self declared with reg renewal.
"to compensate for loss of petrol tax"

Although they still kindly offer $100 annual rego discount..

so when does it actually get checked/lodged

whats to stop the rort of "i only drove it 2000K's this year" but actually put 15,000 on it? I could understand if during a pink slip the person doing the rego check does it, but you don't need a pink slip on cars less then 5 years old (in nsw)

Originally Posted by havabeer69

so when does it actually get checked/lodged

whats to stop the rort of "i only drove it 2000K's this year" but actually put 15,000 on it? I could understand if during a pink slip the person doing the rego check does it, but you don't need a pink slip on cars less then 5 years old (in nsw)

as far as I know -- ha ha -- for the past 5 to 10 years, all BEVs and Hybrids came with continuous GPS positioning which automatically (as in can't turn it off) records distance travelled.
Rather trivial to remote query the GPS as to how far the vehicle has travelled in the past week, month, quarter, year, etc. This data is already collected for ICE vehicles, so there should be no privacy concerns about the ATO knowing.

Then it would be not much harder to include in the query "where has the vehicle exceeded the posted speed limit in the period in question?"
Which does lead to significant privacy concerns, as the question is very blunt with no nuance for why the speed limit was exceeded.

The issue will then be kms travelled on private roads -- currently refunded as fuel excise system -- and kms travelled on public roads, which is captured within the fuel excise tax.

.
.

The Federal and State governments have been working on this issue (how to tax EVs) for something like the past 15 years.

No need for backdoor readings. And just because the vehicle monitors its own travel doesn't mean it is publishing it.
Requirement is to send a photo of odometer. Trivial to have ocr to extract the current reading.
I suppose if one had a second vehicle with similar display but lower kms you could send the readings from it instead. So long as it doesn't get sold or scrapped before the ev...

Makes one wonder what the ultimate purpose of an odometer really is.

If one fibbed on the taxes/km paid, then it could be taken out of your hide when the car is sold?

I'd imagine it might be a compulsory part of insurance soon(?). I get a discount as I travel less than 10k km/yr. I effectively go nowhere, so their risk is lower. It doesn't take much imagination to see this system abused by Them...

has no one heard of photoshop