Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Penn on 22 February (HL5634), how much it would cost the taxpayer to equalise the VAT rate for public charging (20 per cent) and home charging (5 per cent) for electric vehicles.

As noted in the Written Answer of 22 February, the Government has no plans to change the VAT treatment of EV charging.

The practical challenges of differentiating between the electricity used at home for general domestic purposes and the electricity used to charge electric vehicles (EVs) currently means that the reduced rate VAT relief for supplies of domestic energy is effectively being applied to EV charging at home. Given those practical challenges the Government has not estimated the additional cost to taxpayers from increasing the rate of VAT applied to home EV charging.

The fiscal cost of introducing a new relief, to reduce the rate of VAT applied to public charging, would likely depend on a range of factors including the level of EV take-up, driver behaviour and the comparative energy costs for home and public charging, which can vary significantly. Introducing such relief would likely have a large fiscal cost, which would grow over time as use of EVs increases.