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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 5th, 2023

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  • 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.


  • Just to pay devil’s advocate for a moment - but let’s imagine the house has oil heating (heating oil is basically diesel). Ignoring the problems of unpaid duty, given that the heating oil is provided as part of the holiday home’s services, would it be theft if a guest filled up their diesel car from the heating oil tank? If that would be theft, why would (at least in the holiday home owner’s opinion) it be unreasonable to not treat charging an electric car off the house supply in the same way, as clearly just as the heating oil isn’t intended to be put in guests cars, the electricity isn’t, either?