Bicycle allowance: higher maximum exempt amount from 1 January 2024
November 2023 - If an employee receives a bicycle allowance, this allowance is exempt from social and tax charges up to a certain amount. This bicycle allowance is currently capped at EUR 0.27. Recently, the Council of Ministers decided to increase this amount to EUR 0.35 from 1 January 2024.
At the same time, an annual ceiling on the tax exemption is introduced, up to EUR 2,500 per year. This annual ceiling corresponds to a distance of 7,142 kilometres per year, calculated with a bicycle allowance of EUR 0.35 per kilometre. This distance represents a commuting distance of 17 kilometres, considering 210 days of commuting. The amount exceeding this ceiling will be subject to social security contributions and payroll withholding tax.
The NAR's collective agreement No 164 (which introduced a generalised bicycle allowance) does not change. This supplementary collective agreement provides a bicycle allowance of EUR 0.27 (this amount is indexed annually) for a maximum distance of 40 km (round trip).
According to figures from HR service provider SD Worx, from April 2023, almost one in three Belgian employers made a bicycle allowance available to their employees in 2022. Five years ago, this was only half. The proportion of employees with a bicycle allowance doubled in five years from 7% in 2017 to 14% in 2022.
