As the title says, RTBF reports that a slim majority of Belgians was in favour of abolishing company cars, e.g. here: "Une courte majorité de Belges pour la suppression des voitures de société"
Yesterday, media reported that Belgium is the country which taxes its citizens the most, e.g. here: "Belgium remains champion for highest tax burden despite small drop"
Do people want to be taxed even more?
by benineuropa
39 comments
What a lot of people do not seem to understand, is that taxation goes to the community, i.e. to ALL of us. It is the way to be a society, not a band of individuals. There is no problem inherent with taxation, if you receive the value of a working society in return.
It’s not about being taxed, it’s about taking steps to reduce car dependency. Fewer people consider cars for granted -> public transport becomes more used -> public transport improves.
At least works like that in my simple mind. I mostly care about transportation being accessible to all.
People want *other* people to be taxed more.
Company cars should be forbidden. It’s subsidized by the taxpayers who cannot benefit this advantage.
The slim majority doesn’t have a company car.
The problem with company cars is two things in my opinion. One that it is subsidized by the state and see no reason why everyone needs to pay for people having a car. If the company wants to give people a car sure but they need to pay it whole on there own.
Two most people don’t have a company car from nurses to builders no one. Just a specific class of people get them.
Not for adding more taxes maybe on the ultra rich but not on the middle class.
My comment from the other thread before it got removed:
My personal take on this is that a company car does not make sense at all as a way of getting compensated. I will chose more wage over a car any day, even if that means paying “more” taxes. A car only has value when you use it. Not only is it completely worthless if you’re not using it frequently enough, it also just sits there and needlessly takes up infrastructure when you’re not using it. Increased wage I can spend on whatever I want, a car is only useful to go sit in traffic. No thank you.
On top of that, the subsidies of the cars come out of our taxes anyway, so we’re still collectively paying for it, to the tune of billions a year. The tax break for a minority of the population is being carried by the entire population, meanwhile the entire working population suffers from the high taxation it’s claiming to “solve”. For social security I have no problem with contributing even if I’m not directly benefiting from it, but for cars…. Yeah no, that money would be better spent on more useful things (like improving public transport).
In a country with as much traffic jams as Belgium, it’s just absurd for the government to subsidize office workers to get to their job by car.
I commute to my job by train. When I got my job I got to pick between train pass + slightly higher wage, or company car. I only use a car occasionally, so I don’t need my own, I just borrow my parents’ car when I need it. But if I weren’t in a situation where I could borrow a car, I would have to get one. And then the best financial decision, by far, would be to take the company car and not take the train pass. So I would commute by car instead of by train (because the train pass is expensive), adding to the ever worsening traffic jam problem.
So I’m financially incentivized to commute by car instead of by train, which is completely unreasonable policy.
Company cars are for me a symbol of ‘koterij’. Instead of tens of different constructions to reduce tax burden on an individual level, there should imo be a general decrease of the tax rate. Abolishing these constructs will however hurt some people while benefiting others. Most likely company car owners (or their employers) will be some of the most negatively impacted people, due to the size of the benefit. If the abolishment of company cars is part of such a reform, it doesn’t mean that abolishing them will result in an increase of the societal tax burden.
Thats not to say that specific tax advantages are to be avoided at all costs. If they nudge individual behaviour in a way that benefits the society i find them acceptable. I do not however see how company cars benefit the society.
Belgium is one of the most equal country in the World, wealth wise, I’m proud of that.
Belgium has a spending problem, not a tax rate problem.
– we dislike cars
– we dislike rich people not paying a fair share
I love my company car.
What subsidy is given for company car?
I don’t understand what you guys mean.. does the government pay companies to give company cars?
I answered « Stop with company car » because this id a loophole to act on the absurd taxation on the work.
But i guess the majority of people wants to erase this advantage at the condition that we are less taxed on incomes.
Company cars are the wrong solution to the problem of too high income taxes
I actually don’t mind the amount of taxes I pay, I mind what is being done with it. If we weren’t seeing a decline in our education, social welfare and imminent collapse of our healthcare system, I really wouldn’t care that half of my paycheck goes to taxes.
I have no issue with paying more taxes. But I want the service that I pay for. With the taxes that we currently pay, I would expect the smoothest, fairest and most efficient running government.
I should have to worry about almost nothing. We should be out of debt as a country.
Unfortunatly we pay a lot and get mismanagement in return. Worst of both worlds.
The tax is misleading, through all the benefits etc even with the tax i earn far more than i did in the UK. And ill take less company cars, the roads and quality of drivers in belgium is horrendous.
People like to hate on other people who got more than them and in the confusion everyone gets more taxed but the richer people still enjoy their loopholes to enjoy a tax free or at most very cheap tax country while laughing at the middle class destroying each others.
That’s one way to look at it, but I have a pretty sizeable car budget, I’d rather not have that and a better net salary. It’s an absurd tax optimisation and I would happily vote to abolish it in favour for lower taxes on salaries. Drive over the border to Holland and most people drive tiny cars because they don’t have this absurd tax structure (and as a consequence much better salaries).
It’s a benefit, people are so taxed that they would rather get paid partly in benefit, and company cars are very culturally embedded in belgian middle class society
You can perfectly stop the practice of company cars without any changes to taxes. The fiscal advantage for company cars is just that: a fiscal advantage. If you take them away while at the same time changing all tax brackets, you have a budget neutral change while also reducing the amount of traffic jams, fresher air, more equality etc.
I have a salary car and I’m in favour of banning them.
First things first, if a car is useful to you, a salary car is an enormous financial benefit. It’d be very hard to compensate with a higher wage.
But a car is a tax incentive to push more people into cars and cause more pollution and traffic. It’s not something we should be subsidizing.
In the end it’s just a tax evasion mechanism. So abolish salary cars and use the difference in the balance to lower taxes. That way the end result should be the same but you’re not pushing people towards cars for mobility.
For completeness sake, I should also mention the benefit they bring and that is that the average car on our roads is relatively young, so safer and less polluting. At the moment it’s also pushing us to electricification a lot faster. Of course the older cars are just shipped abroad so worldwide it won’t make a net benefit.
Company cars are just a tax benefit for a select few, a tax benefit that costs many billions. Which has to be compensated by other people.
So, people want the tax burden to be distributed more fairly, and that can be achieved by abolishing legalized tax loopholes like the salary car.
In addition, the salary car benefit is essentially a subsidy for congestion and pollution.
>Yesterday: OECD finds nobody pays more taxes than belgians. Today: Belgians want to pay more taxes. Please help me understand.
Simply: Common people should be less taxed while rich people should more taxed. Thinking or acting as if we all are equal is nonsense.
So still the same answer as in your previous post.
It’s because the same OECD calculated 10 years ago that we fiscally subsidize those cars for 2.763,00 euro a year.
And that’s not only a world record but also totally bonkers when you know Belgians spend more time in a traffic jam than anyone else.
And yes, tax cuts are (indirect) subsidies.
> A subsidy is a benefit given to an individual, business, or institution, usually by the government. It can be direct (such as cash payments) or indirect (such as tax breaks). The subsidy is typically given to remove some type of burden, and it is often considered to be in the overall interest of the public, given to promote a social good or an economic policy.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/subsidy.asp
People understand that carownership enchances urban sprawling. Urban sprawling enchances car dependency, its a vicous circle.
Cars cost society a fortune, shows this study
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921800918308097?via%3Dihub
Wich I got from a citynerd video
https://youtu.be/qp75-46PnMY?si=bdqZ0zSVE7w0aBRc
So, if we as a society can get rid of car dependency by only a fraction, this will be a benefit in our societal costs, or taxes. That is money that can be spend to public transport or just lowered taxes
A company car makes perfect sense if you need to use it to get your place(s) of work (e.g. a home nurse, a consultant). However, they are now too widespread and are a tax break to avoid paying tax on gross salary.
A problem is covered up by another problem.
I used to have a very nice company car package and I was already not a fan. Rather have lower tax on wages and let people decide what they want to do with it. Also not the best for ecological reasons. It has also totally ruined my taste in cars, before I was happy with an old banger…
I’d hardly say Belgians *want to pay more tax* as akin to *let’s get rid of company cars*.
I’d 100% vote to get rid of the cars. They induce demand at best. And create more carbon footprint at worst.
I’d much rather have that money in my account so I can do *what I please*. Rather than being forced to use a car.
A company car is one of the ways for an employer to make you feel like they are paying you more than your salary, when it costs them less to have the company car than to effectively paying you more.
I guess taxpayers no longer want those shenanigans: pay us more, and stop using those loopholes.
Compensate me with a net salary similar to the cost of owning a car and you can take the car away, any day. Rather than doing that, we’re looking for ways to reduce the net benefit of employees.
And people are falling for that…
I wouldn’t be surprised that behind these proposals there is a lobby of companies trying to save their costs.
People supporting a measure which consists and suppressing this advantage without providing a viable counter proposal, continue this way and we will be all left with reduced salaries.
So this company car thing… is this why there’s more people in Belgium driving around in nice cars than I’m used to seeing back home?
I’m from Britain. I’ll see all sorts of vehicles on the road from Porsche and Mercedes to Nissan and Toyota/Ford.
More of the cars seem to be from the higher end of marquees when I visit Brussels.
De meeste mensen krijgen geen bedrijfswagen dit is dus de typische ‘iemand anders mogen ze meer belasten’ .
Tax bag is not paying public expenses.
Tax bag is an indicator for public officials on how much they can spend.
So once the budget is defined (with tax forecast collection) – lobbyists and private companies enter the stage and start mauling it like a pack of lions ripping antilope apart. And they dont leave any meat behind…
If you believe that paying more tax will make lions happier – you are wrong.
There will be just more lions.. Sad but true.
We dont need more taxes – we need MUCH better fiscal discipline..
company car taxbreak is a way to lower taxes on a certain income class and on a commodity we dont want to promote as a society. The same taxbreak should be spend better and more evenly
It’s about more taxes for the super rich. Today they have too many ways to avoid taxes.
Er is reden genoeg waarom mensen in het buitenland met Belgen lachen
I see a lot of people here opposing company cars. But almost all answers I see from our climate advocates here is that they forget NOT EVERYONE LIVES IN THE CITY AND WORKS IN THE CITY WHERE THEY CAN TAKE A 15 MINUTES COMMUTE INSTEAD OF A CAR.
So I used to live in Brussels, lots of people complain about the public transport but it’s honestly fine. And parking in Brussels is hell, so if I lived there I wouldn’t bother driving. But here’s the thing. I live in wallonia. Public transport is not ready for a car free system.
I started working in Namur in October and lived in LLN when I started. I didn’t have my driver’s license when I started so for 3 months I had to take my electric bike and train for 2 hours, sometimes more if the train was late. And it was always full. It was really hard mentally in the rain, snow and cold. I had to wake up at 5-6 am and would go back home at 8pm. I honestly was exhausted. It was hard to prepare for the next day’s meal. But if I forget to do it, then I would have to spend my break time walking for an hour to get to the nearest supermarket.
When I got my car, it was done in 30-40 minutes and it’s comfortable. Some companies locations are based on the fact that employees can drive there. Companies that pay taxes and contribute to the economy.
Now I am moving to a village near my work to reduce the distance which is about 10-15 minutes of my job but if it gets taken away, I will be back to 2 hours commute.
If I get my own car instead then I hope my employer will compensate for the 2k€ in insurance on top of the cars price.
But we all know that’s not gonna happen.
If we remove the company car, all you’re gonna fuck over are the people starting their career that cannot afford the crazy insurance prices we have. most seniors have a second personal car and rich people are gonna do rich people stuff and not get taxed anyways.
This is a fight over crumbs and not gonna change much other than making some people upset
tax break on traffic inducing pile of steel is what’s wrong