Home charging for employees

[markirl]

Hi folks,

We're getting EVs in work for the first time and investigating how to go about installing chargers and mainly the issue is trying to work out how the business pays for the charging of the EV when its connected to the employees electricity meter. How do companies typically run this?

Thanks in advance

[nipsips]

My company do it per mile. Think the government advisory rate is something like 11p per mile for an electric car?

Otherwise it’s a taxable BIK.

I’ve opted for a hybrid to get around this issue then I can have a fuel card.

[markirl]

Thanks for the response but we are not planning to use the advisory rate as substantial mileage is done so the admin burden will be high.

From all the tax advice we've had there is no BIK on paying for employee company car charging, however there is BIK on provision of a fuel card if they go hybrid/petrol/diesel.

[Muzzer79]

We had the same issue

Ended up estimating the impact of the extra electricity usage on the employee's home account and giving them a payment in line with that.

[Mammasaid]

Is it not possible to install chargers that have an API that can be interrogated, giving a view of each users charging profile? Presumably there's no private use envisaged?

[gmaz]

All EV chargers with an app can report number of kWh charged, so can that be reported monthly by the employee and expensed?

[piecost76]

We use All Star EV cards that sync with your home charger.

All Star pay you back for the EV charging part of electricity consumption & you then pay the company back for private miles.

System works well & it can differentiate between my company car which is on the scheme & wife's EV which is not.

[quinny100]

markirl said:

Thanks for the response but we are not planning to use the advisory rate as substantial mileage is done so the admin burden will be high.

I can't think of anything that will be less admin that using a standard rate x miles driven, one aggregated claim per month.

Everyone will be paying different prices for their electricity that could vary as tariffs change or even by time of use, so surely you need to standardise somewhere otherwise that will be an enormous admin overhead.

As I understand it, the provision of EV charging for employees is only BIK-free where it is provided "at or near the workplace".

[RicksAlfas]

You also need to think who owns the charger? Does it belong to the company or the employee?
If the employee moves house or leaves the company, what happens to the charger?
What if an employee doesn't have a drive? Will you give them a card to charge at public chargers?
I've thought about it before and it's a right can of worms!

[SS2.]

markirl said:

From all the tax advice we've had there is no BIK on paying for employee company car charging, however there is BIK on provision of a fuel card if they go hybrid/petrol/diesel.

There's no BIK liability if the employee reimburses the company for their private mileage, even if fuel for the vehicle was purchased using a fuel card.

[oop north]

Electricity paid for by an employer on a company EV is not taxable whether it’s for private or business mileage. HMRC have been getting it wrong in their advice for years and have only recently corrected it.

It should be possible to have a meter installed along with the charger at employees’ homes to measure the voltage electricity. You then need to know the pence per kWh which may be straightforward (copy of electricity bills) but different time of use tariffs might make it messy.

I can’t remember who it was (2-3 years ago) but I spoke to one company that offers a facility to measure home charging and organise billing.

[ZesPak]

My SiL has had a couple systems now, she's been doing this for about 6 years.

First she had a PHEV with with a "granny charger" that had a SIM card inside, sending the charging data to the leasing company who then reimbursed her a fixed rate per kwh immediately (her employer didn't intervene there, just got the bill through the leasing company).

Now, for a BEV she has a "smart" wall charger installed by the leasing company, again with a SIM uplink to them. Don't know how the billing or reimbursement goes now.

But both times it was the leasing company providing this kind of solution.
They also don't have issues as people don't have a charger installed yet, if you already have one installed I don't know how they would handle it.

[mikey_b]

SS2. said:

markirl said:

From all the tax advice we've had there is no BIK on paying for employee company car charging, however there is BIK on provision of a fuel card if they go hybrid/petrol/diesel.

There's no BIK liability if the employee reimburses the company for their private mileage, even if fuel for the vehicle was purchased using a fuel card.

Indeed. Though I had to fight HMRC over that, some years ago. 'You have a fuel card, therefore you pay BIK'. 'No, feck off, I log all business miles and pay back the proportion of private mileage so the fuel card only pays business miles'. Took at least two goes, and sending them a printout of several month's mileage logs and payslips showing the deductions actually being made, before they backed down over it. At 23mpg and doing ~20k a year, it was a good job they did!