Electric company cars in 2026: tax, costs and charging

Since 1 January 2026, the tax choice for a new company car in Belgium has become binary: zero emission, or not deductible. What most business owners overlook is that the date that counts is not the delivery date but the date on your purchase order, which means a window is still open until the end of December. In this guide we set out exactly what changes, what your employee pays, what the Regions charge on top, and why the line item that really makes or breaks your total cost rarely appears in a leasing quote: charging.

Are electric company cars still tax deductible?

Yes. A fully electric or hydrogen car that you buy or lease up to and including 31 December 2026 remains 100% deductible for the entire term of the contract.

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Cars with CO2 emissions ordered from 1 January 2026 are no longer deductible for corporate income tax purposes. The percentage you secure is locked in for the entire period of use, even if the car is delivered later.

The rest of this guide covers the exceptions, the pitfalls and the costs you carry alongside.

What exactly changes from 2026

Combustion cars: no deduction for new contracts

For petrol and diesel cars bought, leased or rented from 1 January 2026, the corporate income tax deduction is reduced to zero. There is no longer a gradual phase-out and no floor: the deduction disappears in one go.

For cars from the previous batch, ordered between 1 July 2023 and 31 December 2025, a phase-out regime still applies. Watch out for the wording that many articles get wrong: 75%, 50% and 25% are caps, not rates. Your actual deduction is still the result of the CO2 gram formula, with that cap applied on top. So a car that works out at 60% under the formula stayed at 60% in 2025 and falls back to 50% in 2026.

Plug-in hybrids: the end of the favourable regime

In 2025 the government announced a relaxation for plug-in hybrids. That relaxation was ultimately introduced for personal income tax only, so for sole traders and self-employed people operating in their own name. For corporate income tax nothing changes: the phase-out of 75% in 2025, 50% in 2026, 25% in 2027 and 0% from 2028 continues to apply in full to the existing batch, and a PHEV you order from 2026 onwards is no longer deductible.

One point does also affect companies: the definition of the so-called fake hybrid. For plug-in hybrids whose CO2 emissions are measured under the Euro 6e-bis standard or later, the threshold has been raised from 50 to 75 grams per kilometre, with effect from 1 January 2025. The battery criterion of less than 0.5 kWh per 100 kilograms of vehicle weight remains in place. If you are unsure about your model, it is worth checking whether you are driving an electric car or a plug-in hybrid in the tax sense of the word, because that classification determines your deduction.

Electric and hydrogen: 100% in 2026, then a gradual decline

Zero-emission cars have their own calendar, tied to the year of acquisition. Order in 2026 and you keep 100% for the whole term. Wait a year and you are locked at 95% for life. That turns your ordering calendar into a tax instrument.

Vans and light commercial vehicles: a separate regime

This is where most business owners go wrong. The deduction limit applies to passenger cars, dual-purpose cars and minibuses. A genuine light commercial vehicle (lichte vrachtwagen / camionnette) falls outside that limit and stays 100% deductible, even on fossil fuel. The 2026 reform does not touch it.

The sting is in the word genuine. Registration as a light commercial vehicle with the DIV (the Belgian vehicle registration authority) is not enough: the technical characteristics are what count, with specific conditions per body type, including on the fixed partition and the length of the load compartment. If your vehicle does not meet them, it is reclassified for tax purposes as a passenger car and drops from 100% to 0%. Have this checked before you order, not when you file your return.

Sole trader or company? For personal income tax, the deduction on a light commercial vehicle is also calculated pro rata the professional use. A 100% deduction there means 100% of the professional share, not of the full invoice. Have your accountant check this point: the difference between a genuine and a false light commercial vehicle is the difference between 100% and 0%.

Your order date sets your deduction, not the delivery

This is the most important sentence in the whole guide, and it appears verbatim in the administrative commentary: cars that are ordered but not yet delivered count as purchased, and for leasing or rental the date of the contract is what matters.

In practice: if you order an electric car in November 2026 that only reaches your car park in March 2028, that car stays 100% deductible for its entire term. With lead times reaching eighteen months in some segments, that is not a theoretical benefit but a reason to bring your replacement plan forward.

Just as important are the events that create a new date, and can therefore wipe out your favourable percentage:

• any extension of a leasing or rental contract, unless that extension and all its concrete terms were already set out in the original contract and you can trigger it unilaterally;

• exercising a purchase option, which counts as a new contract;

• the transfer of the car and the contract to another company, including within the same group, via an addendum: the date of that addendum then applies;

• an order that you later convert into a lease: the date of the leasing contract then applies, not the date of the purchase order.

Adding an accessory or switching service garage, on the other hand, has no effect on your date. If you manage a fleet, write these four cases explicitly into your contract management: avoiding them costs nothing, fixing them costs a lot.

Table: deductibility by year of order

The percentage is set by the year of acquisition and is locked in for the entire period of use or the term of the leasing contract. Source: circulars 2021/C/115 and 2024/C/50, FPS Finance (FOD Financiën / SPF Finances).

Benefit in kind: what does your employee pay?

How the BIK of an electric car is calculated

The formula is the same as for a combustion car, but the CO2 percentage falls back to the legal minimum:

BIK = catalogue value × age coefficient × 6/7 × 4%

The catalogue value drops by 6% for each year started since first registration, with a floor at 70%. The CO2 percentage is 5.5% plus 0.1% per gram above the reference emissions, with a minimum of 4% and a maximum of 18%. For 2026 those reference emissions are 70 grams for petrol and 58 grams for diesel. At zero grams of emissions, the 4% rate therefore always applies.

There is one floor to bear in mind: the annual minimum benefit in kind is €1,690 for income year 2026. Below a catalogue value of roughly €49,300 the formula produces a lower figure for a new electric car, so your employee pays the minimum, around €141 per month in taxable benefit. The indexed amounts for income year 2026 are published annually by FPS Finance.

What the BIK covers (and what it does not)

This is the best-kept secret of the electric company car. The car's benefit in kind covers not only the use of the vehicle, but also the electricity supplied by the employer, the charging infrastructure the employer installs at the employee's home, and the reimbursement of home charging. No second benefit is added on top.

That reimbursement is subject to four conditions: the charge point is made available by the employer, it measures consumption through a communication system that meets the accuracy requirements in force since 1 January 2025, the reimbursement is set out in the car policy, and only the electricity for the company car is reimbursed. If those conditions are not met, the reimbursement simply becomes taxable salary.

The amount to be reimbursed generally follows the flat rate that the CREG, the federal energy regulator, publishes per quarter and per Region. For the third quarter of 2026: €0.3222 per kWh in Flanders, €0.3719 in Brussels and €0.3783 in Wallonia. You apply the rate for the employee's Region of residence, or the lowest of the three if you want a single rate for the whole company.

CO2 solidarity contribution, registration tax and road tax by Region

Even a zero-emission car is not free in social security terms. The employer pays a monthly solidarity contribution to the NSSO (RSZ / ONSS). For an electric car ordered or leased from 1 July 2023, that contribution is €42.34 per month in 2026, so well over €500 a year. For an electric car predating that date it is €33.93. The multiplier that pushes the contribution sharply up for combustion cars, 4 in 2026 and 5.5 from 2027, does not apply to zero-emission cars: the minimum contribution applies every time.

At regional level, the most important news comes from Flanders. The Flemish exemption from vehicle registration tax (BIV / TMC) and annual road tax for zero-emission cars has been abolished for vehicles registered from 1 January 2026. Cars registered up to and including 31 December 2025 stay exempt as long as they remain with the same owner.

Source: SPW Finances for Wallonia, consulted on 26 August 2026. The Flemish and Brussels scales are indexed every year on 1 July: check the current amount with your regional tax authority. The Walloon rate above comes from *SPW Finances*.

What does an electric company car really cost?

Comparing leasing quotes on the monthly rental alone is the classic calculation error in fleet management. Total cost is made up of six line items, and only the first five usually appear in the quote.

The sixth item is the only one you steer yourself, and its spread is wider than for fuel. So compare on cost per 100 kilometres, not on monthly rental. And do not forget residual value: it is less predictable for an electric car than for a diesel, and it weighs heavily on a leasing price.

Which electric company cars qualify?

From a tax perspective the criterion is simple: zero grams of CO2 at the tailpipe, so a zero-emission vehicle, fully electric or hydrogen powered. Within that boundary the offer has broadened considerably in 2026, from compact models to vans, and almost every carmaker has extended its range.

Three criteria decide in practice whether a model suits your fleet. The range has to match the driving profile of the role, not the highest figure in the brochure: work with real-world consumption and winter conditions. The battery determines not only that range but also the charging speed, and therefore how long your driver stands at a rapid charger. And the catalogue value directly determines your employee's benefit in kind.

Also pay attention to the tax category and to VAT. A company vehicle homologated as a genuine light commercial vehicle follows a different regime from a passenger car: on a passenger car, VAT deduction is capped at 50% and follows professional use, whereas a genuine light commercial vehicle can go up to 100%. Quotes are also often presented excluding VAT, and private leasing in the employee's name falls entirely outside corporate income tax. So always compare on the same basis.

We do not publish a model ranking, because we do not sell cars. What the figures below do show: your choice of model is worth a few euros per 100 kilometres, your choice of charging two to three times that.

Charging: the line item that makes or breaks your TCO

At home, at the office or on the road: the price gap

This is where the real difference sits, and it is bigger than the price gap between two models in the same segment. The table below assumes a realistic consumption of 17 kWh per 100 kilometres.

Sources: *CREG* for the third quarter 2026 flat rates, FPS Economy for the official maximum price of B7 diesel on 26 August 2026 (€2.2410 per litre), and market observation for the average public charging price.

At Electra, the price is shown before you plug in and varies with demand: the detail is on our pricing page.

Run the numbers for a sales rep driving 35,000 kilometres a year and it shows up immediately: charging exclusively at home costs around €1,917, charging exclusively at public rapid chargers at €0.65 per kWh around €3,868. Almost €2,000 difference per car per year, for exactly the same kilometres. Across ten cars, that is the price of an extra car.

What widens that gap further is that the price at the same charge point varies significantly depending on the charging card you use, because of session fees, time-based surcharges and roaming margins. So it pays to compare charging cards before you hand out ten of them, and to know what charging really costs in 2026 in Belgium.

Who pays what? Your charging policy in three rules

A charging policy that works fits on a single page:

• At home: the employer makes the charge point available and reimburses consumption at the CREG flat rate for the Region of residence, with a metering system that meets the conditions.

• At the office: the employer supplies the electricity, with access management per driver so you know who charges what.

• On the road: one charging card per driver, invoiced directly to the company, at a negotiated rate. Your employee never pays out of pocket.

That third rule is not just a matter of convenience. As soon as drivers pay themselves and file expense claims, you lose sight of your energy cost, and the very variable you wanted to steer disappears. For employees without their own driveway, that card is not a convenience but a precondition, because the cheap home rate does not exist for them. They charge at publicly accessible charge points in Belgium, and that calls for a contract, not improvisation. On site, smart charging is the way to serve several cars on a single connection.

Company car or mobility budget?

Not every role needs a car. Anyone who drives few kilometres can swap their company car for a mobility budget: a zero-emission car, sustainable mobility and housing, or a cash balance. Since 1 January 2026, only a car with no CO2 emissions still qualifies under pillar 1.

Important for your planning: the budget is still voluntary today. The announced obligation has been postponed to 1 January 2027 at the earliest for companies with at least 50 employees, and the legislation had still not been published at the end of August 2026.

Frequently asked questions

How long does an electric company car stay 100% deductible?

Cars bought or leased up to and including 31 December 2026 stay 100% deductible for their entire term. After that the percentage drops to 95% in 2027 and continues to fall.

Does the order date or the delivery date count for the tax deduction?

The order date. Cars that are ordered but not yet delivered count as purchased. For leasing or rental, the date of the contract applies.

Are electric vans deductible too?

Genuine light commercial vehicles fall outside the deduction limit and stay 100% deductible, whatever the powertrain. If the vehicle does not meet the technical definition, the passenger car regime applies.

What is the benefit in kind of an electric company car?

Catalogue value times age coefficient times 6/7 times 4%, with a minimum of €1,690 per year in 2026. Below roughly €49,300 in catalogue value, the minimum therefore applies.

What does an electric company car cost per month?

That depends on the arrangement, but on top of the leasing price budget €42.34 in solidarity contribution per month and €68 to €138 in energy per month for 15,000 km a year.

Who pays for charging an electric company car?

Your car policy decides. Most often the employer reimburses home charging at the CREG flat rate and provides a charging card for the road, invoiced directly to the company.

Key takeaways

In 2026 the tax choice has been made: zero emission or not deductible. What you still control is your calendar and your charging policy. Order before the end of December and you lock in a 100% deduction for the entire term, even if the car is only delivered in 2028. Then look at the line item that appears in no leasing quote: between home charging and public charging without a contract there is a factor of two to three. Finally, do not forget that Flanders has abolished its exemption from registration tax and road tax for registrations from 2026, and that the solidarity contribution also comes to well over €500 a year for an electric car.

On the Electra network your fleet charges at rapid chargers delivering up to 400 kW, with Autocharge: the session starts automatically, with no card or app. Companies manage their drivers, their access rights and their sessions through a single dashboard, with one monthly invoice and reporting per vehicle. For your drivers, two plans reduce the cost per kilowatt-hour, and both include the Electra charging card free of charge.

Electra+ Essential: €1.99 per month with no commitment, €0.10 off per kWh on every charge on the Electra network.

Electra+ Smart: €4.99 per month with no commitment, €0.20 off per kWh on every charge on the Electra network.

Both plans also give access to a preferential rate at Atlante, Fastned and Ionity, detailed on our pricing page. Paying annually reduces the subscription by 16%.

Source: *Electra+*, consulted on 26 August 2026.

Want to know which rapid chargers sit on your fleet's routes? Download the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Position as at 26 August 2026. Car taxation is evolving fast: consult your accountant for your specific situation.

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Anneleen, mobility specialist at Electra