Government fights ruling on EV charging VAT cut that could make electric cars cheaper for all HMRC says it plans to appeal a tribunal decision that could see the rate of VAT on some public chargers cut from 20 to five per cent The UK Government is set to appeal a court decision that could see the price of public electric car charging drop significantly. In February, community chargepoint operator Charge My Street and professional services network Deloitte brought forward and subsequently won a first-tier tribunal claiming that electric car drivers have been paying too much tax when utilising public infrastructure. Public EV charging incurs a VAT rate of 20 per cent, which is higher than the five per cent charged on domestic outlets. However, in a statement posted on LinkedIn, Deloitte's legal representative, Oliver Jarratt, wrote: “We noticed that existing VAT law already says that the provision of less than 1,000 kWh per month of electricity to a person at any particular premises counts as “domestic” – always – so we believed the five per cent rate already should apply to public EV charging, provided it was under that limit.” The Government has a different view on the matter, though, with HMRC telling Auto Express that it is “appealing this case, as our position is that standard rate VAT applies to electricity supplied through public EV charging infrastructure”. Of course, even if HMRC’s appeal was rejected, not all chargers would benefit from a lower rate, anyway. With there being 730 hours in every month, rapid chargers outputting over 100kW would almost certainly hit the 1,000kWh limit very quickly. However, many of the slowest on-street 7kW chargepoints won’t ever hit that 1,000kWh limit unless they were plugged-in 24/7. A cut in VAT for public charging would be immediately noticeable and