Kentucky will exempt many publicly available electric vehicle chargers from a new usage tax that would have made it more expensive and complicated for community groups like churches and libraries to offer free EV charging.
The exemption of lower-capacity chargers from a new tax on EV electricity was folded into a last-minute “cleanup” bill addressing technical issues that passed the House and Senate on Monday, the final day of the 2024 legislative session.
Complying with the tax created so much extra work that people who had these chargers were starting to shut them down, according to Lane Boldman of the Kentucky Conservation Committee, which lobbied on behalf of environmental groups for the change.
Boldman said Kentucky will still collect a tax of $0.03 per kilowatt hour on electricity dispensed from high-capacity chargers such as those at Tesla Supercharger sites and the federally funded fast-charging stations the state is building along interstates and highways.
The new language exempts slower chargers often installed in neighborhood gathering places such as parks, churches, YMCAs, libraries and store parking lots.
The tax would have required those community groups to keep track of the electricity dispensed from their plugs even though the chargers do not have separate meters. Then, they would have to remit payment for the tax to the state even though drivers typically do not pay for the electricity.
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Representative Thomas Huff, a Republican from Shepherdsville, who sponsored a standalone bill containing the language that was eventually folded into the cleanup measure, said these are places that ordinarily don’t really pay tax. They were wanting to put the chargers up as convenience for their people, but they weren’t prepared for this.
Huff added the state would have collected a negligible amount of revenue from the community chargers, making the gains not worth the red tape.
When the issue was examined in 2023, Kentucky was one of seven states to adopt a tax on EV electricity.
Source: WDRB
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