Rachel Reeves ‘planning pay-per-mile tax for electric vehicles in budget’
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/nov/06/electric-vehicles-pay-per-mile-tax-rachel-reeves-budget
Posted by daniscross
Rachel Reeves ‘planning pay-per-mile tax for electric vehicles in budget’
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/nov/06/electric-vehicles-pay-per-mile-tax-rachel-reeves-budget
Posted by daniscross
43 Comments
I’m genuinely excited for this budget, for the sole reason that we might get a few weeks reprieve afterwards from these relentless budget speculation pieces.
Farage and Reform frequently own goal. Labour feel bad about that, so they come up with another wildly unpopular policy to piss off the populace even more. Good one.
At this point I am convinced they’re trying to do a shocking job on purpose.
This would be completely intellectually incoherent if they did this. What a great way to kill EV sales and piss off the people that would probably vote Labour.
Conspiracy theorists right once more again.
This is getting boring now.
Although you didn’t have to be a theorists to know that if currently there are a lot of taxes on petrol which are essentially “pay per mile”, a similar thing would come to electric cars too, once they are widespread.
When this one last did the rounds but two weeks ago [the government denied](https://uk.news.yahoo.com/rachel-reeves-told-slap-drivers-063146157.html) it.
>Despite the calls, the Government remains unmoved. A Treasury spokesperson said: “We have no plans to introduce road pricing. We are committed to supporting our automotive sector as we transition to electric vehicles in order to meet our legally binding climate targets.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if, at one point in the last few months, they’ve gone to the treasury and asked if there is a way to do road pricing without telematics or mass tracking. This is the crackpot, totally impractical, unfair and totally unworkable scheme the work experience kid managed to come up with.
It aint happening, like most of the bollocks originating in the telegraph.
with all this new tax haul, i’m sure our public services will return to a good standard… right?
It won’t be wasted on more shite will it?
Another own goal no one voted for, not even remotely.
These shit bags hijacked the labour party with the help of their wealth hoarding business donors, presented themselves as Labour and proceeded with neolib on steroids.
TAX WEALTH FOR FUCK’S SAKE!
1% ON WEALTH OVER 10 MIL, 2% ON WEALTH ABOVE 1 BIL.
I keep seeing this about but how are they going to do it?
You can buy millage blockers that simply plug in and can be removed at MOT time.
What if you work or travel abroad do you pay per mile for being out of the country or can you get millage removed? If so how would it work?
You can charge an EV from a simple 3 pin plug so you can’t just add it onto electricity prices.
It’s entirely impractical to charge per mile.
So how would they know how much one has traveled? Would they expect a single number to be submitted once a year or would they track every journey? Nice addition to digital IDs.
This is very stupid timing, the main issue with EVs is eye watering depreciation. Cars are losing 60-70% in a few years. So the cost of an ev is already crazy from that alone. Until it levels off increasing costs will kill demand further.
Won’t happen. The car industry lobby is incredibly powerful. That are allready pissed about having to build as many EVs as this. Now imagine if the gov kill demand even more
This isnt a bad idea, but it might end up pushing people away from electric cars.
3p per mile for an EV with a £1,500 Electric Car Grant means all is equal at 50,000 miles.
Electric vehicles weigh significantly more than their petrol/diesel counterparts and therefore put more wear on the roads, so it’s fair that they pay per mile just as other vehicles do.
I think a fair tax here would incorporate a vehicles weight into the equation, either as VED or fuel, which might have the added benefit of reducing the number of heavy SUVs driving around cities.
If they want to implement this I believe it needs to apply to all vehicles.
Therefore they’d need to remove Fuel Duty, decrease Fuel VAT to the same rate as Electricity VAT and apply the new pay per mile rate to all vehicles.
I don’t get why EV owners are crying about this, come on guys you must have known the government was going to tax the arse off you to bring you into line with diesel & petrol cars, they were always going to say that you pollute the environment in some way shape or form (with your tyre’s & batteries) they always pick on the motorists, it’s an easy target. Remember the Buy diesel from a few years back? Well now it’ll be the same with EVs, tax you for this-tax you for that!
Rachel Reeves will find a way to fill that black hole & you’re car is going to help do that & if you don’t want to use it she’ll happily have you use public transport, which this government has been pushing for to get cars off the road. I don’t want to see motorists constantly picked on, I hate the fact, but guys you should have seen this coming.
They should plan a “tax per gallon of sewage release” for water companies. Maybe then they would fix the infrastructure or end up renationslised at which point our water bill revenue goes to government anyway.
But the old diesels can still pay £30 a year…
Fuck off.
I was listening to the Private Eye podcast yesterday and they were talking about how Purdah used to be in place where the budget was known as soon as it was announced rather than weeks of speculation and floating of ideas.
That’s the problem with these schemes.
The early adopters tend to be wealthy people who are willing to take a chance and get access to the early promotional/incentive schemes. They could afford to not need the incentive schemes in the first place
By the time the rest of us mugs get a chance to buy in, the incentives have been dropped and a counter tax starts applying.
Same problem for bio boilers, heat pumps gov schemes etc.
And how do they evaluate how much EV drivers are to pay?
Because if the answer is “they track the movements of all EV cars via GPS”, which also seems like the only way to reliably do it… Hopefully people will be up in arms about that.
This is the stupidest one yet. Are they deliberately trying to get the public to hate the government? Paving the way for reform on purpose.
We should be encouraging the population to move away from petrol and onto electric, not taxing it!
Why is it everyday I wake up and there is something new to pay?
Sick of it.
I have a used EV which I picked up cheap because depreciation – do about about 70-80 miles a week, costs me less than £20 a month to charge it at home. I couldn’t care less about pay per mile tax, it’s still cheaper and more convenient than an ICE car would be.
Yet another useless idea from the incompetent Labour government. They spend a decade telling us we all need to switch to EVs to save the planet, now they want to tax us for having one. Fucking dickheads.
I’m confused, do they want people to buy electric cars or not? Because that’s one way to stop them.
i mean depending on how much the per mile tax is and when it will be introduced it may kill the EV car market or severely dent it if the cost savings are not there to be had compared to a normal ICE car
How is this planned to be tracked? I can see a market for dodgy hacks to any hardware installed in cars.
Pay per mile is effectively a tax on not living in a big city. If you totally exclude leisure travel and only consider essential journeys, the less dense the population is in an area the further the average distance you have to travel for work, shopping, doctor etc. Where I grew up A&E was 70 miles away, GP was 3 miles, supermarket 35, station 50, hospital 100, airport 120
Politically it’ll just come off as another attack on farmers and rural communities
Surely everyone pays per mile by either paying for the electricity used or other fuel?
It was a pain in the arse logging mileage when I had a company car. Imagine making everyone in the country do it. It’s just stupid. Therefore it’s probably being considered 🤔
She won’t do this, she will add 2% to the middle class income tax instead. That is easy, enforceable and difficult to avoid
She will say those with the broadest shoulders should bear the burden, like those filthy rich fat cats earning £45k a year
So now we’re going to be taxed for moving around the country? What’s fucking next, a tax on how many breaths we take?
Probably loseing lots of money from road tax but this does mean you’ll probably need to be tracked 24/7 sooooooooo
Sod that.
Kill off EV sales and make them a less palatable option while also claiming to care about the environment? Good job theres seemingly no way this could work.
Bring in a road tax for all vehicles where the money is ring fenced for road maintenance since EVs will still cause wear and tear, probably more so with their weight. But apply it to all vehicles, don’t specifically punish people for choosing the thing you want people to choose.
We should be incentivising people switching. I reckon this is bollocks but if not what an own goal (yet again).
Pay per mile for EV’s was always coming, but I think we need to be further down the adoption road than we are. And 2.5p per mile seems excessive, either she’s testing the water with this ‘leak’ or this is more idle speculation designed to harm her and the Labour government.
Surely it should be on all cars not just EVs. Targeting it just at EVs is going to discourage people to buy EVs.
Well, as someone who drives for my job that will completely obliterate any reason to want to switch to an electric car in the near future.
Its not about “fairness” it’s about incentive.
And collecting it will be a nightmare. What are you supposed to do- put your milage into a portal or something? Yes, that won’t be open to fraud at all
They must know they are never getting elected ever again, right? They seem to be speed running their way towards that for some reason.
Trying to out Tory the Tories? Great job guys-this will be like Christmas for Nigel- and he will be worse.
Here’s a tip- tax the multi millionaires/ Billionaires and corporations the tax they actually owe- and invest that in the country and people- do not punish the people because you refuse to tax the rich.
They won’t of course.
As ever- follow the money- Rachael and the rest have been bought and paid for, that’s why they will always put the people last and the corporations/ billionaires first.
Bye bye electric vehicle, it was nice whilst it lasted
Mixed messaging from the government is extraordinary – green power that we don’t want you to use to get to the new runway at Heathrow. Let it make sense.
Constantly trying to find the money to replace what we lost from leaving the EU
It shouldn’t be different for electric cars. Petrol and diesel should move to the same pay-per-mile system, just at a higher rate than electric. There should still be an incentive to drive an electric car.
As an EV owner it would take my cost per mile from £0.02 to £0.05, compared to my ICE cars fuel costs of c. £0.25/mile.
Seems fair enough to me.