The Treasury has decided to appeal a tax tribunal ruling that decided public EV charge points should be getting charged 5% VAT under the current rules. 

The initial case was brought by a community charging group from the north of England called Charge My Street, which successfully argued that public charge points fell within the scope of a historic cut in VAT for domestic electricity supplies. 

The rules say that electricity counts as for domestic use if the person using it doesn’t get through more than 1,000kWh in a month. The judge agreed with Charge My Street’s interpretation of the rules and decided that the group had been overpaying its VAT. 

The government had 56 days to lodge an appeal, which it has now done at the last minute. There have been rumours that the chancellor Rachel Reeves had been considering a cut in VAT on public charging to try and rebalance the imbalance between public and home charging. 

The greater expense of public charging is stopping drivers without off-street parking from being able to run their cars cheaper than the petrol equivalent and has been cited in Electrifying surveys as putting them off from switching to EVs. 

Electrifying founder Ginny Buckley has been campaigning for the government to make the VAT cut and put its money where its mouth is when it comes to promoting zero emission vehicles. "Government research shows around a third of UK households don’t have off-street parking, meaning millions of drivers will depend on public charging. Yet they’re the ones paying the highest price. 

"Even with today’s energy prices, charging at home can cost as little as 1.8p per mile, but if you rely on public charging that can rise to around 18p per mile – 10 times as much and often more than running a petrol car. Public charging is taxed at four times the rate of electricity at home, which simply isn’t fair."