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VicRoads has billed charged electric vehicle owners 2.8000000000000003 cents a kilometre – a mistake the agency says it has now fixed, while arguing no one will be affected.
The road user charge, which is how the state ensures EV drivers contribute to road wear and tear given they don’t pay a fuel excise, increased from 2.6¢ a kilometre to 2.8¢ a kilometre on Saturday through the start of the new financial year.
Policy consultant Bryce Gaton charging his electric vehicle. Credit: Joe Armao
But due to an automated accounting quirk, the increased charge has shown up as 2.8000000000000003¢ per kilometre on people’s bills, and has re-ignited the debate over how the tax has been administered and whether it should even exist ahead of a landmark High Court ruling.
VicRoads has blamed the accounting quirk on an “unintended system-generated issue”. The agency has also assured customers they will not be financially worse off under the error.
VicRoads chief information officer Dale Andrea said the extra decimal points would be removed overnight, and would no longer be in place from Wednesday.
“The calculation is limited to the display of the rate and no customers have been overcharged,” he said. VicRoads said fewer than 120 customers were affected.
But that provided little comfort to EV enthusiasts, who argue the blunder is indicative of not just bad policy, but bad administration.
“It’s just classic,” Brighton resident Bryce Gaton said of the itemisation error. “The whole system’s stuffed.”
Gaton, an electric vehicle consultant, said VicRoads last year overestimated his road user charge by 40 per cent, which was the equivalent of hundreds of dollars.
“It was due to automated backdating,” he said. “They rang me back saying your calculation is right. But their system wouldn’t [easily] allow staff to make any amendments.”
Rich Molloy, the secretary of the Australian Electric Vehicle Association’s Victorian branch, said Gaton’s experience wasn’t an isolated one.
“There’s lots of anomalies that keep coming up,” he said, adding that he had not received the $100 annual discount for having registered a zero or low-emissions vehicle.
The accounting quirk comes a week after VicRoads invited thousands of people in the Ballarat region to take part in a digital licence trial, but bungled their surnames.
What is most frustrating for EV owners, according to Molloy, is the fact that they are being slugged with the road user charge even when travelling interstate.
“Of course we will need a road tax at some stage in the future. But it’s inappropriate to do it now. At the moment we need to be encouraging EVs, not discouraging them,” Molloy said.
“And when it comes, it needs to be universal. We don’t need different rules in different states. That’s just crazy.”
The Andrews government wants half of all light vehicles registered in Victoria to be zero or low-emissions vehicles by 2030.
NSW is due to introduce a road user charge in July 2027, or when EVs comprise 30 per cent of new-car sales – whichever comes first. Western Australia is examining similar laws.
A Victorian government spokesman said the road user charge was a “fair and sustainable revenue base” and that the money was funnelled into the state’s roads.
Hybrid vehicles are currently subject to a charge of 2.3¢ a kilometre.
In September 2021, EV drivers Kathleen Davies and Chris Vanderstock initiated High Court proceedings in a bid to have Victoria’s road user charge ruled unconstitutional.
Since then, the Albanese government has filed an intervention supporting the two motorists. Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas has labelled the federal government’s move a brazen revenue grab.
The High Court is yet to hand down its decision.
VicRoads has deregistered more than 200 electrified vehicles since the road user charge came into effect in July 2021 because motorists failed to pay up.
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