On a related note: De Lijn Will cancel a lot of stops and busses by 2025 “to improve quality”.
You can’t make this shit up really. I know we’re the country of surrealism, but on the day an article comes out to abolish company cars and move to more public transport, that same public transport says “go fuck yourself and walk”.
In a year I’ll be eligible for a salary car so the ban will be there soon, don’t worry!
Also “minder investeren in wegen, meer in fietspaden etc”.. has this guy ever been out on the Belgian streets in a vehicle?!
Ha. Good laugh. How would you compensate those who have a company car? It takes me 45 minutes by bike to go to work. That’s not accounted for all weather conditions. Takes me 20-25 minutes by car. I’d prefer to have the option to chose.
Lol, is it April 1st already? People will love to have their 700 eur a month benefit replaced with a 400 eur a year one
Voor 406 euro koop ik niet eens een fiets…
406 euro _per jaar_ dan nog… Mijn VAA is nu al meer dan 2000 per jaar, wat zelfs nog geen goede manier is om de waarde te berekenen maar het komt al beter in de buurt. Voor 30 euro per maand betaal ik nog niet eens mijne naft, laat staan mijn onderhoud, winterbanden, …
Let’s go for a more level headed reaction than most in this thread.
He is talking about redistributing the tax benefit to everyone in Belgium NOT redistributing whatever your employer pays. So no you won’t get €406 instead of a car you wel get €406 a year + whatever your employer is spending on your car in gross wage. This quite often is €750+ a month so assuming you are in the highest tax bracket you will get an additional €375 per month. In total you would get about €400 month net extra. Still less than the current benefit but not as outrageous as everyone would like to pretend it is.
Why not kill two birds with one stone:
Abolish the company car, estimated revenue €4.5 billion a year. Instead of giving that to every Belgian like in this proposition give it to everyone working in order to make working more attractive. Everyone working would get € 930 net extra per year (€77.50 per month). On top of that you employer pays whatever he is now paying for you car to you as gross wage. Recent budgets are €750+ per month. So that equals out to about €375 per month net, add to that the €77.50 and you get to a situation where you get about €450 net per month extra.
I know that people with a company car (myself included) would lose out but can we really keep demanding that everyone else is paying for our cars and encouraging us to use them whenever we can without any costs?
>would it change much
It would piss off a lot of people.
Let’s start from the start: you get a gross salary. From that, a certain (big) amount of taxes is being hold back before you get paid your net salary.
Those taxes are progressive, so that who earns more, pays more. One of the goals of those taxes is to redustribute welfare.
Because Belgium taxes so heavily, they introduced alot of ´extralegal´ advantages, amongst which the company car. Companies can offer you a car, for which they pay and you can use, as part of your salary.
Because this is not a cash payout which is taxed as your regular salary, the government values the car by some parameters (value, age, emission,…) and adds a ´VAA´ to your gross salary to calculate your taxes. As this VAA is lower than the cost you’d have for a similar car, you benefit as an employee in this setup.
Now, the current proposal would take that car away from you (which is part of your salary package negotiated with your employer) and give money to everyone (also those who don’t have it in their salary).
So from a financial point of view, this doesn’t make sense to me, because you just redistribute welfare in the same way they do with regular taxes. It doesn’t change the reason employers give cars as part of the salary package.
If they just want to cancel company cars, I’m expecting my employer to still have the same cost: my salary + taxes + cost of leasing me my car. In the current proposal, they want to take away the car cost from the employer and give peanuts back, because everyone gets it. So I wouldn’t just lose the fiscally interesting company car, but I’d also lose a lot of salary in the process.
And to me, that would be wage theft…
Btw: I would be ok to get rid of the company car, but there is no reason why that should result in me costing the company less, while still doing the same job. And preferably, also without negatively impacting my own financial situation.
406 euro. per jaar.
Daar kan 1 gezin van 4 personen een enkele treinrit naar Brussels Airport mee kopen.
(25 euro enkele rit per persoon van in m’n thuisstad).
So, screwing over hundreds of thousands of families, and giving people a pittance in return. An amount that won’t even be enough to cover 20 train rides a year.
Regardless of your opinion on salary cards, this is a moronic idea. I don’t know where those people live, but it must be in one of the very few places in this country that has useful public transport. Demonizing cars when they’re the only viable option for the majority of people, is being a fucking asshole.
Oh man, I’d fucking love it if instead of paying 1150 per month for a giant bak to some leasing company, they’d give it to me brutto instead. Even if it’s 60% taxed, that’s a huge fucking raise. I’d buy a tiny second-hand toyota yaris that has 200 euro per year tax and 400 euro per year insurance, and spend 50 euro per month on gas because we work from home, and have 200-300 net per month leftover on top!!
Completely agree. Remove all tax favors and lower taxes for everyone. But why do those headlines always suck so bad. Will every Belgian get this or is it an average? I assume they’ll increase tax free income brackets or something?
Maybe if public transport wasn’t so fucking shit
I don’t get how people think that 406 euros a year would replace a car.
The reason we have so many company cars is because it is really expensive to give somebody a raise or a high salary. Most of that money flows to social security contributions and taxes.
As an employer, you want to differentiate yourself to new hires, keep good employees on board and reward good results. With the current system, you have to pay a lot to give a little.
So, employees are offered cars. This is way cheaper than giving the employee a comparable amount netto. And, cars are highly valued by employees, a bit more than their actual cost/worth. Plus, having a company car is somewhat of a status symbol.
**Company cars are not about transportation, they are about remuneration.**
Until that system is fixed, companies will keep trying to find better ways to offer attractive pay to employees. But how do you reform this system without the government getting way less social security contributions and tax income? You can’t just shift it, we are one of the highest taxed countries in the world already.
Then there is public transport. During peak hours, it is at full capacity and using it is an unpleasant experience. During calm hours, it can be very pleasant which means the problem here is mainly capacity. And there is no easy way to increase that capacity.
Add to this the fact that it simply doesn’t have a wide enough spread in the country to be a valid alternative to the car. Ever tried traveling to Bruges from Limburg? Calculated how long you need to walk to a bus stop, take a bus to a station, hop on a train, take another bus to your destination? If that is even feasible.
Just imagine if our public transport, already over capacity, now has to transport thousands of extra passengers. Imagine what that will do to the quality. And we can’t simply increase the capacity here. We are limited in terms of infrastructure, budget and time.
So what would we need? A major fiscal overhaul, more investments in public transport to improve quality and reach, and a reduction in the demand for transportation during peak hours.
This country is full of shaky deals like company cars, meal vouchers, various kind of cheques, special holiday allowances, 13th months, automatic salary du adjustments and so on simply because the system is a combination of that so-called social negotiation where both employers and workers need to win something and give something. Real reform is not part of our vocabulary.
Maybe just start with the tankkaart?
I’m not going to work for a company that doesn’t offer me a car. Companies in my sector (consultancy) know this.
On an unrelated note, I love how every single subject has like one expert that all popular media outlets go to. Labor issues? Stijn Baert. Tax issues? Michel Maus. General economic and financial issues? Paul D’Hoore and so on… would be way better to have numerous experts provide their opinion on the topic at hand.
As if I can buy a car with 406 a month in which I want to sit 2 hours a day, let alone be able to insure it full omnium to leave it in the center of Brussels to be scratched up… If I have to buy my own car they can find another crazy person to do my job… For a lot of us ‘salary’ cars or company cars which means, we need them for our jobs. Not just to transport home-work but also for a lot of km’s during the daytime from one client to another…
406€ per year… what a joke.
I would be ashamed to put my face next to this.
Dat wil zeggen dat mijn vrouw en ik voor ~ €30.000 per jaar aan firmawagen gaan inleveren, en we in ruil als gezin (2+2 kinderen) 4*€406 gaan terugkrijgen.
Waar mag ik tekenen?
/s
And let’s be honest: we all know the “vergroening” of the salary cars is not meant to save the planet. It’s meant to save the salary car.
Those 406 euro’s would be taxed and would likely put you in a higher tax bracket. You would literally not gain much. You’re better off with a salary car.
It would certainly disadvantage people who work and benefit people who don’t work.
For a country that wants to attract more technology talent and businesses they’re sure doing everything to make sure they’ll never come.
Get rid of IP reward, want to get rid of company car,…
Okay, fine. But then also eliminate different statutes for pension calculations.
Society shouldn’t be funding the vastly higher pensions of government workers either.
Simple calculation based on years ACTUALLY worked and cash put in.
Can’t be saying they need those higher pensions to compensate for not having a company car while also eliminating company cars.
With 406 euro you can’t even pay road taxes and insurance
tbh, alot of people have a company car that they don’t really need. €400 PER YEAR is a joke though. what do they think will happen? people taking public transport and what not? they’ll just buy a cheap, old crappy car that polutes more than a newer one and drive to work
30 comments
On a related note: De Lijn Will cancel a lot of stops and busses by 2025 “to improve quality”.
You can’t make this shit up really. I know we’re the country of surrealism, but on the day an article comes out to abolish company cars and move to more public transport, that same public transport says “go fuck yourself and walk”.
In a year I’ll be eligible for a salary car so the ban will be there soon, don’t worry!
Also “minder investeren in wegen, meer in fietspaden etc”.. has this guy ever been out on the Belgian streets in a vehicle?!
Ha. Good laugh. How would you compensate those who have a company car? It takes me 45 minutes by bike to go to work. That’s not accounted for all weather conditions. Takes me 20-25 minutes by car. I’d prefer to have the option to chose.
Lol, is it April 1st already? People will love to have their 700 eur a month benefit replaced with a 400 eur a year one
Voor 406 euro koop ik niet eens een fiets…
406 euro _per jaar_ dan nog… Mijn VAA is nu al meer dan 2000 per jaar, wat zelfs nog geen goede manier is om de waarde te berekenen maar het komt al beter in de buurt. Voor 30 euro per maand betaal ik nog niet eens mijne naft, laat staan mijn onderhoud, winterbanden, …
Let’s go for a more level headed reaction than most in this thread.
He is talking about redistributing the tax benefit to everyone in Belgium NOT redistributing whatever your employer pays. So no you won’t get €406 instead of a car you wel get €406 a year + whatever your employer is spending on your car in gross wage. This quite often is €750+ a month so assuming you are in the highest tax bracket you will get an additional €375 per month. In total you would get about €400 month net extra. Still less than the current benefit but not as outrageous as everyone would like to pretend it is.
Why not kill two birds with one stone:
Abolish the company car, estimated revenue €4.5 billion a year. Instead of giving that to every Belgian like in this proposition give it to everyone working in order to make working more attractive. Everyone working would get € 930 net extra per year (€77.50 per month). On top of that you employer pays whatever he is now paying for you car to you as gross wage. Recent budgets are €750+ per month. So that equals out to about €375 per month net, add to that the €77.50 and you get to a situation where you get about €450 net per month extra.
I know that people with a company car (myself included) would lose out but can we really keep demanding that everyone else is paying for our cars and encouraging us to use them whenever we can without any costs?
>would it change much
It would piss off a lot of people.
Let’s start from the start: you get a gross salary. From that, a certain (big) amount of taxes is being hold back before you get paid your net salary.
Those taxes are progressive, so that who earns more, pays more. One of the goals of those taxes is to redustribute welfare.
Because Belgium taxes so heavily, they introduced alot of ´extralegal´ advantages, amongst which the company car. Companies can offer you a car, for which they pay and you can use, as part of your salary.
Because this is not a cash payout which is taxed as your regular salary, the government values the car by some parameters (value, age, emission,…) and adds a ´VAA´ to your gross salary to calculate your taxes. As this VAA is lower than the cost you’d have for a similar car, you benefit as an employee in this setup.
Now, the current proposal would take that car away from you (which is part of your salary package negotiated with your employer) and give money to everyone (also those who don’t have it in their salary).
So from a financial point of view, this doesn’t make sense to me, because you just redistribute welfare in the same way they do with regular taxes. It doesn’t change the reason employers give cars as part of the salary package.
If they just want to cancel company cars, I’m expecting my employer to still have the same cost: my salary + taxes + cost of leasing me my car. In the current proposal, they want to take away the car cost from the employer and give peanuts back, because everyone gets it. So I wouldn’t just lose the fiscally interesting company car, but I’d also lose a lot of salary in the process.
And to me, that would be wage theft…
Btw: I would be ok to get rid of the company car, but there is no reason why that should result in me costing the company less, while still doing the same job. And preferably, also without negatively impacting my own financial situation.
406 euro. per jaar.
Daar kan 1 gezin van 4 personen een enkele treinrit naar Brussels Airport mee kopen.
(25 euro enkele rit per persoon van in m’n thuisstad).
Strak plan.
Intussen bij de buren
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11iwui3/germany_is_to_introduce_a_single_49_52_monthly/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/11iwui3/germany_is_to_introduce_a_single_49_52_monthly/)
So, screwing over hundreds of thousands of families, and giving people a pittance in return. An amount that won’t even be enough to cover 20 train rides a year.
Regardless of your opinion on salary cards, this is a moronic idea. I don’t know where those people live, but it must be in one of the very few places in this country that has useful public transport. Demonizing cars when they’re the only viable option for the majority of people, is being a fucking asshole.
Oh man, I’d fucking love it if instead of paying 1150 per month for a giant bak to some leasing company, they’d give it to me brutto instead. Even if it’s 60% taxed, that’s a huge fucking raise. I’d buy a tiny second-hand toyota yaris that has 200 euro per year tax and 400 euro per year insurance, and spend 50 euro per month on gas because we work from home, and have 200-300 net per month leftover on top!!
Completely agree. Remove all tax favors and lower taxes for everyone. But why do those headlines always suck so bad. Will every Belgian get this or is it an average? I assume they’ll increase tax free income brackets or something?
Maybe if public transport wasn’t so fucking shit
I don’t get how people think that 406 euros a year would replace a car.
The reason we have so many company cars is because it is really expensive to give somebody a raise or a high salary. Most of that money flows to social security contributions and taxes.
As an employer, you want to differentiate yourself to new hires, keep good employees on board and reward good results. With the current system, you have to pay a lot to give a little.
So, employees are offered cars. This is way cheaper than giving the employee a comparable amount netto. And, cars are highly valued by employees, a bit more than their actual cost/worth. Plus, having a company car is somewhat of a status symbol.
**Company cars are not about transportation, they are about remuneration.**
Until that system is fixed, companies will keep trying to find better ways to offer attractive pay to employees. But how do you reform this system without the government getting way less social security contributions and tax income? You can’t just shift it, we are one of the highest taxed countries in the world already.
Then there is public transport. During peak hours, it is at full capacity and using it is an unpleasant experience. During calm hours, it can be very pleasant which means the problem here is mainly capacity. And there is no easy way to increase that capacity.
Add to this the fact that it simply doesn’t have a wide enough spread in the country to be a valid alternative to the car. Ever tried traveling to Bruges from Limburg? Calculated how long you need to walk to a bus stop, take a bus to a station, hop on a train, take another bus to your destination? If that is even feasible.
Just imagine if our public transport, already over capacity, now has to transport thousands of extra passengers. Imagine what that will do to the quality. And we can’t simply increase the capacity here. We are limited in terms of infrastructure, budget and time.
So what would we need? A major fiscal overhaul, more investments in public transport to improve quality and reach, and a reduction in the demand for transportation during peak hours.
This country is full of shaky deals like company cars, meal vouchers, various kind of cheques, special holiday allowances, 13th months, automatic salary du adjustments and so on simply because the system is a combination of that so-called social negotiation where both employers and workers need to win something and give something. Real reform is not part of our vocabulary.
Maybe just start with the tankkaart?
I’m not going to work for a company that doesn’t offer me a car. Companies in my sector (consultancy) know this.
On an unrelated note, I love how every single subject has like one expert that all popular media outlets go to. Labor issues? Stijn Baert. Tax issues? Michel Maus. General economic and financial issues? Paul D’Hoore and so on… would be way better to have numerous experts provide their opinion on the topic at hand.
As if I can buy a car with 406 a month in which I want to sit 2 hours a day, let alone be able to insure it full omnium to leave it in the center of Brussels to be scratched up… If I have to buy my own car they can find another crazy person to do my job… For a lot of us ‘salary’ cars or company cars which means, we need them for our jobs. Not just to transport home-work but also for a lot of km’s during the daytime from one client to another…
406€ per year… what a joke.
I would be ashamed to put my face next to this.
Dat wil zeggen dat mijn vrouw en ik voor ~ €30.000 per jaar aan firmawagen gaan inleveren, en we in ruil als gezin (2+2 kinderen) 4*€406 gaan terugkrijgen.
Waar mag ik tekenen?
/s
And let’s be honest: we all know the “vergroening” of the salary cars is not meant to save the planet. It’s meant to save the salary car.
Those 406 euro’s would be taxed and would likely put you in a higher tax bracket. You would literally not gain much. You’re better off with a salary car.
It would certainly disadvantage people who work and benefit people who don’t work.
For a country that wants to attract more technology talent and businesses they’re sure doing everything to make sure they’ll never come.
Get rid of IP reward, want to get rid of company car,…
Okay, fine. But then also eliminate different statutes for pension calculations.
Society shouldn’t be funding the vastly higher pensions of government workers either.
Simple calculation based on years ACTUALLY worked and cash put in.
Can’t be saying they need those higher pensions to compensate for not having a company car while also eliminating company cars.
With 406 euro you can’t even pay road taxes and insurance
tbh, alot of people have a company car that they don’t really need. €400 PER YEAR is a joke though. what do they think will happen? people taking public transport and what not? they’ll just buy a cheap, old crappy car that polutes more than a newer one and drive to work