Recently, yet another stir arose over the status of company cars in Belgium. As part of federal budget negotiations, the Planning Bureau listed more than 250 cost-saving options, including one that sparked considerable debate: eliminating or reducing tax benefits for company cars and fuel cards.

Once implemented, that could generate 4,5 to 5,5 billion, nearly half of what the government needs to raise.

A recent report from the FPS Mobility and Transport now shows that, after nearly two decades of strong growth, the number of company cars in Belgium appears to be stagnating, as the figure rose by 0,2% over the course of a year, reaching exactly 629,156.

Stagnation or not, such figures are unlikely to change the highly polarizing debate over company cars in Belgium – a system that many economists and policymakers agree is unfair and expensive – let alone prompt politicians to address the issue.

+1,558 company cars

Between the first quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, the number of company cars in Belgium increased by exactly 1,558. According to the National Social Security Office (RSZ), this brought the total to 629,156. 15% of Belgian employees now have a company car.

In the report, the FPS Mobility defines company cars as vehicles made available to employees for personal use. Company cars for executives and official vehicles were not included in the count.

The data also shows that the number of employees using a mobility budget without company cars remains limited to 0,57% of the workforce. According to FPS Mobility, the increase in mobility budgets is therefore too small to explain the stagnation in the number of company cars.

Inconsistent system

The tax benefit for company cars is one of the potential topics in the federal budget negotiations but is seems unlikely that the system will actually be addressed, since the government wants to reduce the tax burden on labor, and the company car is, after all, primarily a way to offset the high taxes on labor.

But it goes without saying that the system is inconsistent: an employee with a company car is not taxed on the actual value of the benefit received, which means two people with the same gross salary do not pay the same amount of tax.

Tax specialists therefore advocate treating such a car no differently than cash compensation and suggest phasing the system out gradually, but only alongside a lower tax on labor.

Sensitive issue

The fact that this is a sensitive issue – because it affects many voters and businesses – is evident from the heated debates between supporters and opponents whenever the idea of abolishing it is brought up.

In the newspaper De Morgen, Pieter Vansteenwegen, director of the KU Leuven Institute for Mobility, offers an interesting perspective today, including a few proposals sure to fuel the debate.

First, he argues that it is absurd to compensate people based on vehicles and vehicle kilometers because it encourages people to drive even more, leading to even more polluting overconsumption and traffic jams.

Vansteenwegen also questions whether a company car contributes to electrification, for example because those cars eventually end up on the used car market. According to him, research shows that after just 5 years, half of new company cars have disappeared from Belgium. After 8 years, that figure rises to three-quarters.

Okay, that might help the rest of the EU and the world to become greener, but perhaps the more important question Vansteenwegen raises is this: is the Belgian vehicle fleet becoming green much faster than in neighboring countries, where they don’t have a company car system?

Well, the figures show that company cars in Belgium are accelerating the shift to EVs, but they don’t show that you need them to do so. In Norway (98%), Denmark (81%), Finland (50%), and Sweden (43%), the share of new electric car registrations is significantly higher than in the Netherlands (39.3%) and Belgium (37.8%), which are, however, above the EU average of 21.7%. In Luxembourg, France, and Germany, the figures range from approximately 30% to 27%, respectively.

In other words: the countries ranked higher than Belgium also offer government incentives such as tax breaks or lower toll and parking rates, but they provide these incentives to all buyers rather than only company car users.

‘Solution is simple’

The solution to the company-car problem is simple, Vansteenwegen concludes, while also pointing out that accelerating the electrification of the vehicle fleet is an expensive way to reduce carbon emissions, when what we really need is more cyclists and better public transportation.

“Over the next five years, reduce the tax benefit of company cars by 20% each year,” he writes in De Morgen. “The billions the government saves as a result (it won’t actually be 5, but perhaps 3 or 4) can then be used either to reduce the budget deficit, or to lower the tax burden on labor for everyone, or – apparently a priority for some – to reduce the tax on labor only for the highest earners. Even if abolishing the company car system did not yield immediate savings, it would still benefit our mobility and health. That is the main conclusion.”