Electric vehicle owners in Victoria couldn’t be blamed for wondering if they might get their money back after the High Court found the state’s zero and low-emission vehicle road-user charge to be unconstitutional.
The government, facing massive budgetary pressures - don’t mention the Commonwealth Games - might also have its own questions to ask about the court putting an end to the tax.
Better known as the “EV tax” (and dubbed by its critics as the worst electric vehicle policy in the world), the charge meant that a registered owner of an electric or hydrogen vehicle had to pay the state government 2.8 cents for each kilometre that the vehicle travelled on public roads. Plug-in hybrid vehicle owners were charged at a lower rate of 2.3 cents.
