The ATO EV home charging shortcut (5.47c/km) — how it actually works

For most novated lease expenses, the process is straightforward — you spend $X on something, submit the claim, and that amount is paid from pre-tax dollars.

Electricity is a different beast. Different tariffs, solar vs grid, time-of-use pricing, free public chargers, workplace chargers, battery losses… it quickly becomes a record-keeping nightmare with no clean answer for what was actually spent.

Recognising this, the ATO essentially said: this is getting ridiculous.

So instead of forcing everyone to track the cost of every kWh, they introduced a simplified shortcut method.

What is the EV home charging shortcut?

Under PCG 2024/2, the ATO allows EV owners to claim home charging costs at a flat rate of:

5.47 cents per kilometre driven (from 1 April 2026) Previously: 4.2 cents per kilometre (to 31 March 2026)

This applies to home charging, and it is:

• based purely on odometer readings
• completely independent of
  • your electricity tariff,
  • when you charge,
  • how much solar you use,
  • how much free charging you get elsewhere.

In other words:

When it comes to claiming home charging expense, the ATO does not care how you actually charged the car. They only care how far you drove it.

This makes the method simple, cheap to comply with, and very predictable.

How the electricity claim actually works

A common misconception:

I charge for free ¹ / extremely cheap e.g. solar or workplace charging, so why am I asked to ‘spend $820.50’ in the budget when I didn’t spend anything?

Claiming $820.50 in electricity does not mean you are spending an additional $820.50. In fact it does not even mean you are spending anything; what instead happens is you receive extra money.

Normally, every dollar of gross income gets taxed before it reaches you. For example, on the 37% + 2% Medicare levy bracket, each additional $1.00 of gross income only becomes $0.61 in your bank account.

When you claim the $820.50 in electricity, you are directing that $820.50 of gross income to be paid out untaxed — as if the ATO agreed to let the full amount pass through.

Compare the two scenarios:

The difference is $320.00 extra — money you would not have had otherwise.

Critically, this $320.00 has nothing to do with your actual charging cost. Whether you charged for free ¹, at 8c/kWh, or at 30c/kWh, the claim produces the same extra money.

This is why you should claim the electricity amount even if your real charging cost is zero ¹.

The counter-intuitive bit: you can make a net financial gain from charging and driving

Because the pre-tax benefit is fixed by distance — not by what you actually spent — if your real charging cost is low enough, you could be paid to charge your car. Here is what that looks like with real numbers.

Example

If you drive 15,000 km in a year and are on top marginal tax bracket (45+2%):

• Claim amount: 15,000 × $0.0547 = $820.50

Your car has an average efficiency of 150Wh/km, and you charge your car on a cheap tariff of 8c/kWh.

• Actual electricity expense: 15,000 x 0.15 x $0.08 = $180

When you claim the $820.50,

• Extra money made = $820.50 × 47% = $385.64

Once you reconcile with your actual expense, post-claiming you have made $205.64 profit from charging and driving the car.

In the Novated Lease Calculator, the calculations above are automatically performed in the Detail - Annual Electricity Report, under Net charging expense (after tax reimbursement).

The three ways you can claim EV charging

If you read PCG 2024/2 carefully, there are three permissible approaches.

1. Use 5.47c/km for distance driven

This is the simplest and most common method.

As discussed above, you:

• record odometer readings,
• calculate the distance driven,
• claim 5.47c/km for that distance (4.2c/km for FBT years ending before 1 April 2026).

If you choose this approach, you can’t claim any commercial charger cost that you have incurred.

2. Claim only commercial charging invoices

If you use commercial chargers often, you can instead:

• keep invoices from public / commercial chargers,
• claim the actual dollar amounts paid.

If you choose this approach, you can’t claim any home charging.

3. Mixed method (home charging + commercial charging)

This is the least common, but sometimes most beneficial, and it’s the method I personally use some years.

It is also the most record-keeping-intensive approach, and only worthwhile if the additional benefit meaningfully exceeds the extra effort.

You can do this only if:

• your vehicle can reliably report how much charging occurred at home vs elsewhere, and
• you keep proper records i.e. odometer reading for the period covering each FBT year i.e. 1 April to 31 March

The method works like this:

• home charging distance → claimed at 5.47c/km (pro-rated based on charging ratio; 4.2c/km for FBT years ending before 1 April 2026),
• commercial charging → claimed using actual invoices.

The home charging to commercial charging ratio is derived from the energy split (kWh charged at home as a proportion of total charging).

Example:

From the period 1/4/2023 to 31/3/2024, an EV has driven 12,418km. According to the Tesla app, over this period, 1,447 kWh is charged at home out of 2,432 kWh total, which is 59.5%.

This means we can apportion the 12,418km to:

• 7,389km (59.5%) charged at home
• the rest charged elsewhere.

We then use the 4.2c/km rate (applicable for the 2023–24 FBT year in this example) to calculate the home portion charging expense, alongside all the commercial charging invoices in this time period, and claim both amounts.

How to choose the method that gives you the highest claim

The three methods can produce very different claim amounts for the same FBT year. Since a higher claim means more money in your pocket (as explained above), it pays to calculate each one before deciding.

Step 1 — Does your car support the mixed method?

The mixed method requires your car (or charger) to reliably report kWh charged at home vs. elsewhere, covering the full FBT year (1 April – 31 March).

Tesla — best in class. The Tesla app’s Charge Stats feature shows an explicit percentage and kWh breakdown between home, Supercharger, and other public charging, filterable by month or year. This is the gold standard — it directly produces the ratio the ATO requires with no manual work.

BMW (MyBMW) — usable with some effort. The app records kWh per session with the location address, and supports an Excel export (confirmed on BMW Australia’s support site). There is no automatic “Home / Public” label, but home sessions are identifiable by address. Workable for FBT with minor manual classification.

Mercedes-EQ (Mercedes me app) — workable, but requires setup. The app can track home charging kWh if you register a compatible wallbox as “My charging station,” and public sessions if you use the MB.CHARGE Public service. Both conditions must be met simultaneously. No CSV export has been confirmed, but session history is viewable in-app.

Most other brands — not useful on their own:

If your car falls into this group, you can still use the mixed method — but you’ll need to source the data from two places: your home charger’s own app (e.g. Wallbox, Zappi, Jet Charge, EVNEX) for home kWh, and your public network receipts (Chargefox, Evie Networks, NRMA Electric Vehicle Charging, etc.) for commercial kWh. Whether that record-keeping effort is worthwhile depends on how much commercial charging you do.

If you cannot reliably reconstruct the home/away split, you are choosing between Method 1 and Method 2 only.

Step 2 — Calculate each applicable method’s claim value

Use the same FBT year (1 April – 31 March) for all calculations.

Method 1 — Odometer shortcut:

Claim = total km driven × $0.0547

Method 2 — Commercial invoices only:

Claim = sum of all commercial charging invoices for the period

Method 3 — Mixed (if available):

Claim = (total km driven × home charging %) × $0.0547 + sum of commercial charging invoices

The home charging % comes from the energy split: kWh charged at home ÷ total kWh charged.

Step 3 — Pick the highest

Whichever method produces the largest dollar figure is the one you should use.

Worked example — you drive 15,000 km in the FBT year, your commercial charging invoices total $400, and your car shows 80% of energy came from home charging:

The mixed method wins here by $235.90 over the next-best option — which translates to roughly $92–$111 extra in your pocket (depending on your tax bracket), purely from the additional record-keeping.

The key takeaway

If you remember nothing else:

The EV home charging shortcut puts extra money in your pocket based on distance driven, and this benefit is yours even if you charge cheaply or for free. ¹

For those with solar or cheap tariffs, it is surprisingly generous.

Reference

• ATO Practical Compliance Guideline: PCG 2024/2
• ATO guidance on the 5.47c/km rate (from 1 April 2026)