Surely this is already the case where petrol taxes are higher if you drive more. I don't think it's fair for me to not be taxed less in an urban environment considering I drive much less
Another U-turn in the making.
I suspect it's the thin end of the wedge.
Electric cars today.
ICE cars tomorrow (double dipping by also retaining fuel tax)
It could be this governments poll tax moment, but maybe it's a slow boiling of the frog so no-one will do anything.
If only the spent this revenue on fixing our crater filled roads full of zombie potholes ressurecting themselves from last year.
Doubtful. Any government will have to do this. Fuel duty is almost 2% of government income.
What about anyone that drives abroad? You would accrue English road tax for driving on french or Irish roads!
This is a bit of red herring. From the POV of the driver of a petrol car, you're paying tax to someone - it doesn't matter who - you're still paying fuel duty. If you don't refuel abroad, you paid all the fuel duty in the UK. If you did refuel abroad, you're not exempt from the fuel duty abroad, you still pay someone for fuel duty even if it's not the UK - so from your point of view, you're still paying roughly the same to someone (taxes on fuel aren't that grossly different between countries a British driver may drive in).
So a mileage tax on electric cars, then you're no worse off than the petrol car driver, you're paying tax to someone, you don't care who is running up the additional cost you have to pay, you're still paying it. If significant miles are driven by UK drivers in France (e.g. a significant imbalance between how much UK drivers drive in France compared to French drivers driving in the UK) then the French and British governments can decide how that gets divvied up after they have received the tax money from their respective drivers without involving the driver themselves. If in reality UK drivers drive in France about as much as French drivers drive in the UK, then really there's no need to worry about it.
If, hypothetically, France put a tax on electricity from fast chargers for example - you would be double paying that milage.
You would pay UK duty if you drove on Irish roads with a fuel tank filled in the UK.
With this, you would potentially be double(or triple if you include road tax itself) dipping on tax though. You would be paying for milage + Irish tax on 'fuel' when filling up in Ireland.
With petrol, you would be paying Irish tax filling up & driving there, not both.
Maybe an offline GPS ringfenced mileage tracker to be reported at MOT. Only counts UK mileage, and tough to cheat.
I can see that causing a proliferation of illegal GPS jammers.
..... And lots of stories about the government having gos trackers in all electric cars
Then opt-out of the tracker and pay based on raw odometer readings.
The UK has very substantial petrol taxes, which approximate a mileage tax. I don't know how exactly the funding is managed in the UK, whether the money goes into general revenue or is allocated straight to road maintenance, but the ICE vehicle drivers are ultimately paying for roads one way or another.
And I'd say that that's reasonable
I've no opposition to road vehicles at all, but road construction and maintenance is an externality, and you'd want to have that priced in, if you want the market to do efficient allocation of resources.
BEVs also make use of the road (and in fact, I suspect that due to the generally-greater-weight, they probably create more wear-and-tear, if anything).
EDIT: Though...with petrol tax, the tax tends to increase on heavier vehicles, since they tend to burn more fuel. It probably doesn't perfectly mirror the increased road wear seen between a heavy and light ICE vehicle, but it'll probably be closer than a simple "flat rate per mile" tax. As the article describes the BEV tax, it'll be a flat rate per mile. It does seem to me that there's a reasonable argument, if heavier BEVs create more road wear and tear than lighter BEVs, that the weight should be an input to a tax there as well.
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