Noted on 1 Oct 2026

Today VAT on home electricity drops to 0% until the end of March. Public charging stays at 20% (for now, see below). That makes a public kWh 20% more expensive than a home one, up from 14%.

That's a small part of a much bigger gap. Zapmap's August price index has the average pay-as-you-go price at 54p/kWh on standard public chargers, typically on-street or destination, and 77p on rapids. Home charging is about 26p on Ofgem's price cap this quarter (up slightly from last quarter), and around 8.5p on an EV tariff. Roughly a third of households have no off-street parking, so many of them will be paying the higher numbers.

That 20% rate may come down. In February a Tribunal found, in principle, that the reduced rate can apply to charging at public charge points. HMRC said in May that it had applied for permission to appeal, and that public charging is standard rated in the meantime. I'm watching how this turns out.

Much of the support for EVs so far has been built around a driver who can charge at home. As the share of new cars that has to be electric goes up under the ZEV mandate, more of the remaining buyers will be households who can't.

A question for anyone running public or on-street charging: if the VAT rate matched the home rate, would prices actually come down for consumers?