Bike plan in the Netherlands 2026

What is a bike plan in the Netherlands?

A bike plan is the umbrella term for five bike routes. Two of them add 7% of the price to your taxable income. The other three run outside the bijtelling. In the employer route your employer buys or leases the bike. You ride it to work and privately, with no limit on either.¹ In return, your employer adds 7% of the recommended retail price to your gross salary.¹ That addition is the bijtelling.

The Dutch call the arrangement a fietsplan or a fiets van de zaak. The rules also cover an electric bike, a lease bike and a pedelec.¹

A bike your employer provides works differently from a bike you own. A bike you buy yourself stays yours. Your employer can then help with an untaxed kilometre allowance or a loan instead.² A shared bike, like the OV-fiets, is different again. It hardly ever stands at your home, so no bijtelling applies.¹

Meet Mira. She works as a lab technician near Utrecht and earns €35,000 gross a year. Her employer offers her a bike with a recommended retail price of €2,000. We work out what that bike really costs her.

Which bike schemes can you use?

Your situation decides which of the five schemes you may use.² Your employer’s bike is only one of those five routes.

Are you self-employed with an eenmanszaak? Then only the business-bike route is open to you.² An eenmanszaak is a one-person business without a legal entity of its own.

Employees and DGAs can use the other four schemes.² A DGA is the director and majority shareholder of a bv, a Dutch private limited company. That person counts as an employee of the same company.²

The table below sets the five schemes side by side. It shows who may use each one and what it does to your taxable income. The 30 percent ruling sets a salary requirement. Ask your employer to check that requirement before you swap gross salary. A gross salary swap can push your pay below the 30 percent ruling salary norm.

How much tax do you pay on a company bike?

You pay tax on 7% of the bike’s recommended retail price each year.¹ The first two rows of the table land on that same 7%. Your employer works that annual amount into your payslip, so you never receive a separate bill.

You may ride the bike to work, but the scheme does not require it.¹

Do you pay a personal contribution for the bike? Your employer subtracts that contribution from the bijtelling.¹ The subtraction can never be larger than the bijtelling itself.¹

Accessories add nothing to your bijtelling. A pannier for your laptop bag or a second lock stays untaxed.¹

Two situations remove the bijtelling. A bike parked at your home address no more than 10% of the time carries none at all.¹ A bike you may only use for work carries none either.¹

One condition is easy to miss.

What does a bike plan cost you as an employer?

You withhold the wage tax and you pay the premiums yourself.² What does that same 7% look like from the payroll side? You add 7% of the recommended retail price to your employee’s gross salary.² Over that amount you withhold wage tax and national insurance contributions each pay period.²

You also pay employee-insurance premiums and the healthcare contribution over the bijtelling.² Your employee’s net salary drops slightly because of the extra wage tax.²

You can also make the bike cost your employee nothing. You do that by designating the bijtelling as final-levy wage inside the werkkostenregeling.² Dutch payroll calls that final-levy wage eindheffingsloon. It puts the tax on you rather than your employee.² You may place the bijtelling there, which is a choice rather than an obligation.¹

The werkkostenregeling gives you an untaxed budget called the vrije ruimte. In 2026 that budget is 2.00% of your fiscal wage bill up to €400,000.³ Above that amount it is 1.18%.³ Go over the vrije ruimte and you pay an 80% final levy on the excess.³

Two more employer rules matter for the cost. You may depreciate the purchase price against your profit.² And you may deduct the VAT up to €130 when your employee uses the bike to commute.² A bike of €749 or less therefore gives you all of its VAT back.² Several conditions apply to that deduction.² One of them concerns earlier bikes for the same employee.² You must not have bought or leased one in the current year or the two before it.²

Three of the five schemes run outside the bijtelling. In the gross-salary route your employee gives up part of their gross salary and receives an allowance for the bike instead.² You designate that allowance as final-levy wage, so both of you pay less tax and fewer premiums.²

An employee who rides their own bike can get a kilometre allowance instead.¹ In 2026 you may pay up to €0.25 per kilometre untaxed for business kilometres.¹ Commuting counts as business travel here.¹

Or you lend your employee the money interest-free.¹ The Belastingdienst values that interest benefit at zero, a nihilwaardering.³ Your employee repays the loan, so it never comes out of the vrije ruimte.²

Can you buy a bike through your own business?

You need at least 10% business use to put a bike through your eenmanszaak.² So the whole payroll route falls away the moment you work for yourself. You then pay the same 7% bijtelling and you add it to your profit.²

Three deductions work in your favour. You depreciate up to 20% of the purchase price a year.² You deduct running costs such as insurance, repairs and accessories.² And you reclaim the VAT as input tax, as long as you use the bike for turnover you charge VAT on.² Do you also ride it privately? Then several ways of handling the VAT apply.² The right one depends on your own use.²

A small-scale investment credit may come on top of those deductions.² We set out the thresholds and the depreciation rules on our page about business assets and depreciation.

Are you a DGA? Then this route does not apply to you, because your own bv employs you.²

What does a company bike cost you per month?

Mira pays €4.17 a month in tax for a bike worth €2,000.¹ Every route above ends in a figure on a payslip or in a profit statement. Her employer adds 7% of €2,000 to her gross salary, which is €140 a year.¹

In 2026 a gross salary of €35,000 falls in the first tax bracket, at a rate of 35.75%. Wage tax and national insurance on that €140 come to €50.05 for the year.¹ Spread over twelve months, that is €4.17.¹

Her employer can take even that €50.05 away. Designating the €140 bijtelling as final-levy wage leaves Mira with nothing to pay.² That works as long as the vrije ruimte still has room in it.³

The steps below show the whole calculation in one view.

The recommended retail price sets the bijtelling and your own tax rate sets the bill. Nothing in the calculation depends on how far you ride.

The bijtelling reaches your tax return as part of your wage.

Is a company bike cheaper than buying one yourself?

It depends on your tax rate, and your employer owns the plan bike. Pay for a bike privately and the full price leaves your net income once. Take a bike through work and the tax applies to 7% of the recommended retail price each year.¹

The bike belongs to your employer under this scheme. So you are comparing the use of a bike against owning one.

Three things decide the outcome: your own tax rate, the price of the bike and the room in your employer’s werkkostenregeling.

Buying the bike herself would cost Mira €2,000 from her net pay, once. Through work she pays €50.05 in tax a year, which is €4.17 a month. That gap decided her yes.

Ask your employer which of the five schemes they run. Ask whether they place the bijtelling in the vrije ruimte. And read your first payslip after the bike arrives.

A company bike sits next to your other work benefits. Our guide to work and income shows how the Belastingdienst treats the rest of your salary. Travel costs covers the commute itself.

Want us to do it for you? See how we handle your Dutch tax return.