The Advisory Electricity Rate for business mileage is similar to the Advisory Fuel Rates used for reimbursing employees for business mileage in a petrol, diesel or hybrid cars.
The mileage rate reimburses the employee for the cost of electricity used per business mile in the vehicle.
You can see a league table of electric car recharging costs compared to HMRC's Advisory Electricity Rate by clicking on the 'League Table' button up above.
Here on this page you can calculate how much to reimburse an employee based on home or away charging costs and including both the cost of electricity per kilowatt hour and;
The Advisory Electricity Rate is reviewed every quarter by HMRC, but with volatile electricity costs the published rate may be out-of-date when an employee is reimbursed for 'home' or 'away' charging.
HMRC recognises this and allows employers to reimburse employees according to actual recharging costs per mile, subject to the employer retaining proof suporting the reimbursement rate used.
To get started using our calculator you'll need some details about the costs the employee has incurred on electric motoring.
This will depend on whether you are reimbusring 'home' or 'away' business mileage
HMRC will need proof that the mileage rate paid is a genuine calculation of the cost of electricity used on business mileage.
What you will need for proof and to use the calculator will depend on whether you are reimbursing home or away recharging costs:
- Home Costs:
- Reimburse the cost of kilowatts used for recharging:
- You'll need the employee's home electricity bill showing the cost per kilowatt-hour paid by the employee for the period reimbursed.
- Reimburse the kilowatts and standing charges:
- Again you will need the employee's home electricity bill but showing both the standing charge and the cost per kilowatt-hour for the period reimbursed.
- Away Costs:
- You'll need a copy of the receipt for the recharge or the employee's/company's statement for the recharge showing:
- the unit cost of electricity; and
- any subscription/connection charges.
What you will need to use the calculator depends on whether you are reimbursing home or away recharging costs:
Home Costs:
Reimburse just the cost of kilowatts for recharging:
The employee's home electricity bill showing the cost per kilowatt-hour paid by the employee.
Reimburse the kilowatts and standing charge:
The employee's home electricity bill showing both the standing charge and the cost per kilowatt-hour for the period covered by the reimbursement.
Away Costs:
A copy of the charging receipt or the employee's/company's statement for the recharge showing:
- the unit cost of electricity; and
- any subscription/connection charges.
Select A Car
Just select an electric car from the list, starting with the manufacturer, then the range and model.
As you make your selections we'll retrieve data on the car's battery capacity and battery range, which you'll need as part of the calculations.
Don't worry if you can't find your exact car in the selections available - just use the nearest equivalent and you can adjust the figures for battery capacity and range by typing a new value into the boxes.
Recharging Costs
Once you've selected a car you'll need to indicate if you are reimbursing for home or away charging, so click on either the Home or Away buttons.
We've explained the process for 'Home' charging first, but you can jump to the 'Away' charging section by clicking on this link.
Home Charging
If you are reimbursing home charging costs then you will need to select whether or not you are also reimbursing part of the employee's standing charges for electricity.
Standing charges are typically incurred by householders as a fixed daily charge (in pence) for the provision of electricity.
If you are intending to reimbursing standing charges then you'll need:
For the last item you can either:
- calculate the percentage of the bill that's used for business mileage related charging; or
- use our calculator (it will appear when you select 'Yes' for standing charges).
The easiest way to get details of the standing charges is from a copy of the employee's electricity bill (and you will probably need to retain a copy of this for HMRC audit purposes too).
Reimbursing Standing Charges
If you are reimbursing standing charges we'll put an initial value into the relevant box to get you started - you can change the cost by just entering your new amount and pressing the enter key.
If you know the percentage of the employee's electricity bill that relates to electric car charging for business mileage then put the percentage into the appropriate box.
If you don't know the percentage then:
- click on the calculator button;
- enter the total kilowatt-hours from the employee's monthly electricity bill; and
- provide the employee's monthly business mileage.
From this we'll use the charge capacity of the car and its range to calculate the percentage of the employee's electricity bill that relates to home charging for business mileage.
If you're not reimbursing standing charges then we'll just need the cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour and, again, getting a copy of the employee's electricity bill is the easiest way to identify this.
Away Charging
You'll need the cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour from the receipt from the recharge and the number of kilowatt-hours of recharge provided.
You can do this from an actual receipt if one is printed, or a copy of the employee's subscription log from the subscription company that the employee/company uses for away charging.
The employee may have to a pay a subscription fee for away charging, or a connection fee to engage the charger, and you can enter details of the subscription or connection fee in the calculator.
For connection fees or subscriptions click on the appropriate button indicating how the charges are applied.
For example, with:
- a connection fee for each recharge select 'At Each Charge' and enter the connection fee; or
- for a subscription enter the monthly subscription fee.
For either selection use £X.XX for pounds and pence, e.g. for a subscription use, say, £0.35 for 35p (use a leading '0' and a decimal point for pence) or for a subscription, say, £10.00 for the monthly cost.
All Reimbursements
Enter the cost of electricity per kilowatt-hour and press the 'Calculate Reimbursement' button to see the results.
Understanding The Results
We'll calculate the results as a pence per mile reimbursement rate to pay to the employee.
We'll also explain how the mileage rate is calculated, based on the kilowatt-hour cost of cost of electricity and any standing or connection/subscription charges you included in the calculation.
Our calculator takes the battery capacity of the company car then divides this by the range of the car to work out the number of kilowatts used per mile by the car.
For away charging the calculator which includes connection fees or subscription costs we will assume that the car is only recharged from 20% up to 80% (i.e. a 60% difference in charge).
A 60% recharge (from 20% to 80%) is currently the recommended charge level for electric cars.
It will be unusual to recharge an electric car from 0% to 100%, so the 60% value allows us to calculate the cost per mile of connection fees/subscriptions based on 60% of the range of the vehicle.
In the results we will explain the formula used to calculate the recharge and translate this to a cost per mile for charging (including proportions for standing charges/connection/subscription fees).