Company car taxation

Which regime applies to my car

There are three regimes and all of them are chosen by your order date. Ordered on or before 30 June 2023: the gram formula on the emissions figure, and you keep it as long as you keep the car. Ordered between 1 July 2023 and 31 December 2025: still the gram formula, but capped by a ceiling that falls each usage year. Ordered from 1 January 2026: a combustion car yields no deduction at all, while an electric car keeps the percentage of its order year for life.

Keep your order form or lease contract. That document is the only proof of your regime, and it settles four to five years of deduction.

Deductibility in corporate income tax

How much of the running costs you may deduct from your profit. For a combustion car that starts from the gram formula on the emissions figure; for an electric car the percentage sits directly in the deduction calendar. Where both apply, the lower of the two is the answer: the calendar then sets a ceiling rather than the value. That distinction is no quibble, because for most cars in the transitional regime the formula lands below the ceiling.

Two limits bracket that result. At the top 100%, since you cannot deduct more than you spend. And from 200 g/km, or where the certificate of conformity carries no emissions figure, a flat 40% applies. That flat rate is a ceiling and not a floor: if the formula lands lower, the lower value stands.

There was also a 50% floor, and it does not work the same everywhere. For an order placed on or before 30 June 2023 it holds for the car's whole life. In the transitional regime it disappears from usage year 2025, and a high-emission car can then land at zero while the ceiling still says 75%.

Where the formula tips over

The coefficient differs per fuel, and so does the emissions figure at which each limit takes effect. These thresholds are found by walking the formula itself, so they follow any change in the calculation core.

The same rules on seven cars

Per car the percentage the core applies, with the gram formula result and the calendar ceiling beneath it. Where those two differ you can see at once which one binds. That is what a table keyed on drivetrain alone cannot show.

F = gram formula, C = calendar ceiling. Bold is the value that applies.

Not every running cost follows the same percentage

The car's deduction percentage does not govern everything you spend on it. Five categories each follow their own rule, and on a plug-in hybrid they diverge furthest: the car itself can sit at zero while its charging electricity stays fully deductible.

Computed on: Plug-in hybrid 38 g, ordered May 2024.

Mind how the amounts relate when you enter them yourself: interest and the fuel share sit inside the annual running costs, while the charge point, the charging electricity and the fines are added on top. Swapping those around means counting twice.

When a plug-in hybrid is not a hybrid for tax

A plug-in hybrid with too little battery or too much emission is treated as a combustion car for tax. There are two tests and failing either one is enough. Where the car does not pass, the authorities work with the emissions of the equivalent model without a plug, or failing that with the emissions multiplied by 2.5.

• Under 0.5 kWh of battery capacity per hundred kilograms of vehicle weight.
• Above 50 g/km, or above 75 g/km for a Euro 6e-bis or later vehicle ordered from 1 January 2025.

Where battery capacity or weight is missing from your record, the battery test is skipped. That is deliberately the milder outcome: better no correction than one resting on a figure you do not have.

This correction bears on the deduction and on the benefit in kind. It does not apply to the NSSO CO₂ contribution, which works with the certificate of conformity figure.

Benefit in kind

Anyone who also uses the car privately is taxed on that use. The benefit is not an estimate of what those private trips are really worth, but a statutory formula on the list price. A minimum applies, and for an electric car that minimum is almost always the whole answer.

The age correction year by year

For usage year 2026 the reference emission stands at 70 g/km for petrol, LPG, CNG and electric, and at 58 g/km for diesel. The diesel in the table above therefore lands on a CO₂ percentage of 13.2%.

Unlike the deduction and the NSSO contribution, there is no flat rate here for a missing emissions figure: that value has to be looked up.

An employee contribution comes off only after the minimum has been applied, and it cannot push the benefit below zero.

For the diesel in the table above the formula comes to €3,783.50 a year in usage year 2026. For the electric car it stays under the statutory minimum, and then €1,690 applies.

Disallowed expenses

The share of your costs the authorities do not accept is added back to your taxable profit. Two parts together: whatever is not deductible from the running costs, plus a fixed share of the benefit in kind. This is the item that turns a deduction percentage into an amount, and it appeared on no explanatory page at all.

Forty per cent where the employee has a fuel or charging card, seventeen per cent without one. The benefit that percentage works on is the one after the employee contribution has been deducted.

For that same diesel it comes to €6,113.40 with a fuel card and €5,243.19 without, in usage year 2026. That gap of €870.20 returns every year.

On that amount you pay corporate income tax: 25%, or 20% on the first band if your company meets the conditions for the reduced rate. That reduced rate is a condition on the company and not a calculation factor of the car.

CO₂ solidarity contribution

Alongside the deduction limit you pay a monthly employer contribution to the NSSO. It rises with emissions, but below a certain threshold the minimum wins and emissions stop mattering. Two things are often conflated: your order date decides whether the multiplier applies, the contribution year decides how heavily it weighs.

• The constant depends on the fuel: 600 for diesel, 768 for petrol and CNG, 990 for LPG.
• Where the certificate carries no emissions figure, the NSSO imposes a flat rate: 165 g/km for diesel, 182 g/km for the rest.
• The multiplier stands at 1 for every fully electric car and for every car ordered before 1 July 2023. In all other cases the contribution year's value applies.
• A minimum contribution always applies, and it wins more often than the formula does. For a clean car the emissions figure therefore changes nothing about the amount.

For contribution year 2026 the indexation coefficient stands at 1.6291 and the multiplier at 4. The minimum contribution is €42.34 a month under the raised regime and €33.93 for an electric car or an order placed before 1 July 2023.

That same diesel costs €224.77 a month in 2025, €333.97 in 2026 and €459.20 in 2027, with nothing about the car changing. Had it been ordered before 1 July 2023, it would have stayed at €83.49 a month.

What it costs together

Total cost of ownership brings it all together: the running costs after any VAT recovery, the extra corporate income tax on the disallowed expenses, and twelve months of NSSO contribution. That figure allows an honest comparison between cars; the list price on its own does not.

Without an explicit choice you recover none of the VAT on the running costs. If you do opt, it is the 35% flat rate or your actual business use, the latter always capped at half.

From percentage to amount

The same two cars, every step one after another, per usage year. This is where a deduction percentage becomes an invoice.

What happens to the deduction

What this page does not cover

This page deals with the federal core. Several levies the application does compute are not explained here, and the calculation core itself has a few limits worth knowing before you take a result at face value.

Sources and certainty

Not every figure in Belgian car taxation is equally firm. Some appear in the official gazette, others come from a secondary source and remain to be checked with the administration, and a few are announced without being finally settled. Presenting all three as the same thing would not deserve a bookkeeper's trust, so every figure carries its level.

Legal sources

The deduction limit sits in article 66 ITC92 and the non-deductibility of traffic fines in article 53 ITC92. The false-hybrid test follows article 65/1 ITC92. For VAT, article 45 §2 of the VAT Code and circular E.T. 119.650 apply. The CO₂ solidarity contribution follows the NSSO instructions.

For the benefit in kind and for the corporate income tax rates the calculation core carries no legal reference. Those figures are therefore marked as to be verified, common though they are. An honest marker beats a citation nobody has checked.

The removal of a plug-in hybrid's fuel share from 2028 is announced but not fully settled.

This page shows the published framework. To see the values the application is calculating with right now, go to the parameters page. What the application computes with now

The flat-rate threshold sits at 200 g/km and the flat rate itself at 40%. Both come from the calculation core, not from this text.