Written

For

The

Australian

-

Electric

vehicle

owners

should

be

hit

with

more

road

taxes

Here's a confession that might surprise you: I'm an electric vehicle owner, I make my living advising clients how to minimise tax, and yet I'm calling for a new tax on EV drivers. Yes, on people like me.

Here's the problem. Every time you fill up a petrol or diesel car, 51.6 cents per litre goes to the federal government in fuel excise. That's more than $17bn a year funding the roads we all drive on. EV owners? We pay nothing. Zero. And we've been getting a free ride since Tesla first landed on our shores in 2010.

That's not fair, and frankly it's not sustainable. As more of us switch to EVs (there are already 350,000 on Australian roads), that $17bn revenue stream shrinks while road maintenance costs keep climbing. Worse still, EVs are heavier than their petrol equivalents, meaning we're actually putting more strain on the roads we're not paying for.

The federal government is expected to adopt something similar to the NSW model — around 2.5c to 3c per kilometre. For the average driver clocking 11,000km a year, that works out to $275–$330 annually. About $25 a month. Hardly a deal-breaker.

I bought my EV in 2022 the moment the novated lease tax perks kicked in. Buying an EV under $91,387 pre-tax effectively delivered a 47 per cent tax break. Combine that with home charging off my solar panels and cheap off-peak overnight rates, and every drive past a petrol station brings me a small smile.

But that smile doesn't entitle me to use public roads for free. The 98 per cent of drivers still paying fuel excise are subsidising my motoring, and that has to end. If we want more EVs on the road — and we do — the pricing has to be honest.

Bring on the EV road-user tax. I'll happily pay it.