Bijtelling on an e-bike, explained in English

Bijtelling on an e-bike, explained in English: the 2026 Dutch rules

Updated 27/10/2026 · Netherlands · 16 min read · Checked against the Belastingdienst, Rijksoverheid and business.gov.nl

What bijtelling means in plain English

Bijtelling literally means “adding on”. In Dutch payroll tax it is the amount added to your taxable income when your employer gives you something valuable that you may also use privately. A company car is the famous case: for most cars it is 22% of the catalogue price a year, with lower rates for some electric models. The bijtelling on an e-bike is much lighter, a flat 7% in place since 1 January 2020.

It is not a fee, a fine or a subscription. It is notional salary. Each year your employer adds 7% of the bike’s recommended price to your gross pay for tax purposes only, and you pay normal wage tax on that slice through payroll. You never receive that money. You will meet several Dutch names for the same arrangement: fiets van de zaak (company bike), fietsplan (bike scheme) and leasefiets (lease bike). The English wording varies too: business.gov.nl says “additional tax liability”, and you will also see “taxable addition” or “benefit in kind”. This guide says extra taxable income.

The part that surprises people from other countries is how little the tax office asks in return. There is no logbook, no kilometre administration and no rule about how often you cycle to work. The Belastingdienst’s fietsplan page says you do not have to use the bike for commuting or work, and that you may use it privately as much as you like. The 7% is the whole story. If you are new to the country, our guide to the best e-bike for expats in the Netherlands covers the buying side.

The 7% rule in 2026

The base is the consumentenadviesprijs: the manufacturer’s recommended consumer price, including VAT. It is not what your employer paid and not a sale price. Several practical details follow from that.

• Factory options such as a bigger battery are part of the recommended price, so they raise the base. A €75 battery upgrade adds about €5 a year. Accessories your employer adds afterwards, such as a luggage carrier or an extra lock, are not taxed, according to the Belastingdienst.
• A second-hand bike is taxed on the recommended price of that model when new. If your employer buys used, the saving goes to the employer, not to you.
• Each company bike is taxed on its own price. In June 2026 the Belastingdienst confirmed that a second bike also falls under the 7% rate, provided it meets the same conditions as the first.
• A shared bike carries no bijtelling at all if it is hardly ever kept at your home, no more than about 10% of the time. That covers an OV-fiets or hub bike. A personal lease bike that sleeps in your shed does not qualify.
• An own contribution that you pay your employer for private use is deducted from the bijtelling, never below zero. On a €2,500 bike, €14.58 a month brings the taxable addition to nil. The contribution has to come out of your net pay, which matters for lease contracts (see the payslip section).

What does the 7% cost in your pocket? Here is the 2026 maths at the three box 1 rates: 35.75% up to €38,883, 37.56% up to €78,426 and 49.50% above that.

Payroll uses wage-tax tables, so your payslip can differ from this table by a few cents. The Belastingdienst’s own 2026 example uses a €2,000 bike and a €35,000 salary taxed at 35.70%: €140 of bijtelling, €50 of tax a year, €4.16 a month. Your employer also owes employee-insurance premiums and the Zvw employer levy on the bijtelling, and business.gov.nl notes this can leave your net pay slightly lower.

A top-bracket rider on a €5,000 e-bike pays about €14 a month in tax for unlimited private use of a bike that would cost thousands to buy. To see what each price band gets you before you talk to HR, read our guide to what e-bikes cost in the Netherlands.

Bijtelling calculator for your own e-bike

Enter the bike’s recommended price, pick your bracket and, if you pay an own contribution from your net salary, add it. The result is the extra tax on the bijtelling only, not the lease fee.

Worked example: one €2,500 e-bike, three payslips

The bijtelling is only half of a lease payslip. The other half is the lease fee, and in the standard gross-salary lease it comes out of your gross pay, so it is never taxed. The 7% is then added on top. Take a €2,500 e-bike on a 36-month all-in lease of €80 a month gross, with service, maintenance and theft insurance included.

Now the private alternative. Spreading a €2,500 purchase over 36 months costs about €69 a month, plus roughly €9 for e-bike insurance and €12 for servicing, which is a light-use figure (our e-bike service cost guide puts a daily commuter higher). That is around €90 a month, and every repair bill is yours. Over the full term the lease costs roughly €1,715 to €2,040 net against about €3,255 privately.

That private figure ignores resale. A three-year-old e-bike is still worth something, around €1,100 according to the estimate in our lease guide. Subtract it and the gap shrinks to roughly €115 to €440 over three years if you hand the lease bike back. What the lease adds on top is service, theft cover and a replacement bike during repairs, bundled into one monthly amount.

One warning before you trust any calculator, including your employer’s. In a standard gross-salary lease, the fee deducted from your gross pay is not an own contribution, so the 7% bijtelling is added on top, exactly as in the table above. Only a contribution paid from your net salary is deducted from the bijtelling. Ask HR how your scheme is built, and check the line items on your first payslip (see reading your payslip). Our e-bike lease guide for employees goes through the contract side.

Speed pedelecs and cargo e-bikes

For the bijtelling, the speed of the bike does not matter. Business.gov.nl lists a 45 km/h speed pedelec alongside ordinary and electric bicycles in the company bicycle schemes, so the same 7% applies. A €6,000 speed pedelec adds €420 a year to your taxable income, roughly €12.50 to €17.30 a month in tax. Our speed pedelec guide puts the average price nearer €8,000, and at that price the bijtelling is €560 a year, about €16.70 to €23.10 a month.

On the road it is a different vehicle. A speed pedelec is legally a moped (bromfiets). The Rijksoverheid lists what that means: a yellow moped plate, a minimum age of 16, an AM licence, compulsory WA third-party insurance, and an approved moped helmet or a helmet marked NTA 8776:2016. You ride on the combined bicycle and moped path or on the carriageway, never on a standard cycle path. WA-only cover starts around €4 a month, and cover that includes theft and damage runs about €15 to €40 (see our insurance guide). Not every employer scheme allows speed pedelecs, so check both the tax side and the traffic rules. Our speed pedelec rules for the Netherlands cover fines and where you may ride.

Cargo e-bikes are the scheme’s quiet winners. The tax on a €5,000 family cargo bike is about €10 to €14 a month, and school-run kilometres count as private use with no administration. If that is your plan, start with our roundup of the best cargo e-bikes of 2026.

What changed for 2026

• The tax-free kilometre allowance went from €0.23 to €0.25 per kilometre. The government raised it on 1 July 2026, backdated to 1 January 2026. Your employer is not obliged to pay it, and the €0.25 is a ceiling, so ask what your contract says.
• Shared bikes are nil-rated. Hub bikes and OV-fiets-style bikes that stay at your home no more than about 10% of the time carry no bijtelling, as the Belastingdienst’s fietsplan page confirms.
• A second company bike keeps the 7% rate. The Belastingdienst confirmed this in June 2026, with the bijtelling worked out per bike on its own price.
• The box 1 rates moved slightly: 35.75% up to €38,883, 37.56% up to €78,426 and 49.50% above, against 35.82% and 37.48% in 2025. The effect on your lease cost is a euro or two a month at most.
• The WKR free space held steady. Employers get 2% of the first €400,000 of payroll in 2026 and 1.18% above that, and the first-band rate is expected to rise to 2.16% from 2027. This is the pot that funds completely free company bikes.
• There is still no national purchase subsidy. Our e-bike subsidy check for 2026 explains why the Dutch “subsidy” is almost always a tax rule, and this article describes that rule.

Four routes to a company e-bike, compared

Employers mix and match, but nearly every scheme you will meet is one of these four. The Rijksoverheid’s company bike guide for employers lists them from the employer’s side; here they are from yours.

Some employers pair route 4 with an interest-free loan for the bike. Ask payroll how that loan is taxed before you accept it. For illustration: a 20 km round trip at €0.25 per kilometre is €5 a day, about €100 a month, which pays off a €2,500 bike in roughly two years. Our company e-bike scheme guide has the employer-side steps for each route.

The kilometre allowance trap, in numbers

This is the rule that catches people mid-contract. Once you are in a fietsplan, your employer may no longer pay a tax-free kilometre allowance for kilometres you cycle on that company bike, and your commute counts as cycling. The Belastingdienst says so on its fietsplan page. Allowances for days you travel by train or car can continue. On your own bike, an employer may pay up to €0.25 per kilometre tax-free in 2026, as the Rijksoverheid explains. Whether yours does depends on your contract or collective agreement.

So what is that worth? Say you ride 220 working days a year and owning your €2,500 e-bike privately costs about €1,085 a year (the €90 a month from earlier). A lease at the 37.56% rate costs about €665 a year.

The crossover sits at about 4 km each way. Above that, with an employer who really pays the allowance, keeping your own bike and collecting the allowance usually beats the lease. Below it, or at an employer who pays no allowance, the lease wins comfortably. If you currently receive €0.25 per kilometre, run these sums before you sign anything. They ignore what the bike is worth afterwards.

Reading your payslip: four checks and the Dutch terms

Wording differs between payroll providers, so check these four things on the first payslip after the bike arrives.

Fine print people discover too late

Changing or losing your job

A lease contract hangs on your employment contract. When you leave, the usual options are a transfer to your new employer, buying the bike out at its residual value, or handing it back. The bijtelling stops when the bike goes back or when you take it over privately, but the lease obligations do not vanish by themselves. Signing a 36-month contract in your first month at a company is a real risk, not a theoretical one.

Insurance, service and theft

Check what sits inside the monthly fee. A proper all-in lease includes annual service, wear parts, theft insurance and often a replacement bike during repairs. A cheap scheme that leaves them out is not cheap. Whoever owns the bike, a good lock matters as much as the policy: insurers commonly refuse claims without ART-rated locks, and since 2024 some want two. Our ART-approved lock picks are the ones insurers recognise.

If you are self-employed

There is no employer to run a scheme and no WKR. If you buy or lease an e-bike through your sole proprietorship, business.gov.nl says it is allowed when you use the bike for at least 10% of your business travel. You then add 7% of the recommended price to your profit each year, the same rate seen from the other side of the payslip. The English company bicycle page on business.gov.nl covers the deductions that sit next to it, including depreciation of up to 20% a year and VAT.

Is a company e-bike worth it in 2026?

Run this checklist before you sign:

• Does your employer pay a cycling allowance today? If it does and your commute is over about 4 km each way, compare carefully before giving it up.
• What is inside the monthly fee: service, wear parts, theft insurance, a replacement bike, or none of them?
• Does the bijtelling show on top of your lease fee on the payslip? That is the normal setup. If it shows nil while you pay only a gross fee, ask why.
• How long will you stay at this job, and what is the buyout price at the end?
• Which bike do you want? The bijtelling scales with the price, so a sensible €1,500 commuter adds only €105 a year to your taxable income. Our list of the best budget e-bikes under €1,500 is a good place to keep the tax bill small.

For most riders at an employer with a decent all-in scheme, the monthly cash cost wins clearly: about €48 to €57 for a serviced, insured €2,500 e-bike against about €90 for the same bike bought privately. The saving over three years is smaller than that gap suggests once you count what a used bike is worth, so the real value is the bundled service, theft cover and replacement bike, plus the cash-flow relief of not paying €2,500 upfront. The 7% is the easy part. The allowance, the way your contract is built and the exit clause are where the money sits, and you now know where to look.

FAQs

What is bijtelling on a company e-bike and how much tax do I pay in 2026?

Bijtelling is the amount your employer adds to your taxable income for the private use of a company bike: 7% of the bike’s consumer advice price, including VAT, per year. You pay normal wage tax on that slice and nothing more. On a €2,500 e-bike that is €175 a year, or about €5.21 a month in the 35.75% bracket, €5.48 at 37.56% and €7.22 at 49.50%. A contribution you pay from your net salary for private use is deducted from the bijtelling, while a lease fee taken from your gross salary is not, so the 7% still applies on top of it.

Does the bijtelling also apply to speed pedelecs and cargo e-bikes?

Yes. For the bijtelling, a speed pedelec and an electric cargo bike count as a bicycle, so the rate is the same 7% of the consumer advice price per year. A €6,000 speed pedelec adds €420 a year to your taxable income, roughly €12.50 to €17.30 a month in tax. The road rules are different: a speed pedelec is legally a moped, so it needs a yellow licence plate, compulsory WA insurance, an approved helmet and an AM licence.

Can I still get the tax-free kilometre allowance with a company e-bike?

Not for kilometres you cycle on the company bike, and your commute counts. In 2026 an employer may pay up to €0.25 per kilometre tax-free for your own bike, and allowances for days you travel by train or car can continue. If your employer pays a cycling allowance today, compare before joining a bike plan: on a commute of 10 km each way over about 220 working days, the allowance is worth about €1,100 a year, which can beat the lease benefit.