Wyoming Reduces Electric Vehicle Taxes

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A new electric vehicle bill passed recently in Wyoming. The title is sort of self-explanatory: “HB0145 – Removing triple taxation for resident EV drivers.”

Removing the overtaxing of electric vehicles owned and driven by residents of Wyoming sounds like a great idea. Overtaxing them in the first place was not.

A local journalist explained the EV tax changes this way: “It lowers the annual registration fee for all-electric vehicles from $200 to $100, and further decreases that fee to $50 for a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. The bill also exempts ‘alternative fuels’ like electricity for vehicles from sales tax, mirroring gasoline’s exemption. Finally, HB 145 exempts alternative fuel tax on level two chargers, which are slower and often found at local businesses or in town.”

It was a Wyoming Democrat who drives an EV and owns an EV charger firm who proposed the new bill. The bill was also co-sponsored by a Wyoming Republican who drives an EV.

The new tax shifts to the “superchargers” in the state because the idea is then it will be mostly tourists who pay this tax when they drive their EVs within and through Wyoming. They will be the ones using public fast chargers most often, or at least that seems to be the idea.

The non-profit organization Yellowstone-Teton Clean Cities wrote this about the new triple-tax removal: “This is a huge win for electric vehicle infrastructure in Wyoming, as Level 2 charging stations can now more easily be offered and added to Wyoming’s network of charging stations. Level 2 stations are integral to Wyoming’s charging network for residents and tourists. Additionally, this is a streamlined, welcome and fair way for electric vehicle owners to pay a fuel tax to support Wyoming’s roadways.”

The same organization tried to make it extra clear when writing “Level 2 stations do not need to collect a fuel tax.”

Wyoming has about 350 public EV chargers according to PlugShare. There are fewer than 1,300 EVs in the state, which means it is one of the smallest EV markets of all US states.

One might surmise local public policy matters greatly in supporting the transition to sustainable transportation, because in some US states there is very little awareness of the causes of climate change and harmful, toxic air pollution. Local people may cling to outdated, energy wasting, overly expensive gas and diesel vehicles as long as they can instead of making rational choices based on evidence and reason.

There are now plenty of new electric vehicles that cost less or far less than the average cost of a new vehicle, which is about $50,000. There are also many used EVs costing much less than the new ones.