"Fuel fine" to make leasing petrol, diesel, and hybrid cars much pricier next year
From next year, leasing a fuel-powered or hybrid car will be much more expensive for employers. The government is introducing a “fuel penalty” for new lease contracts on January 1, 2027, aimed at accelerating the transition to electric driving, NOS reports.
From next year, employers will pay 1 percent of the official new price of a fuel-powered or hybrid car to the Tax Authority each month. For a car that costs €35,000, that amounts to a “fuel penalty” of €350 per month. The employer must pay this levy and cannot pass it on to the employee.
According to the Association of Dutch Car Leasing Companies (VNA), this penalty, officially called the pseudo-final levy, is causing unrest and uncertainty for employers. “The levy could have major consequences for organizations’ mobility policies and could lead to substantial additional financial burdens,” chairwoman Renate Hemerik told NOS.
This comes at a time when it is already increasingly difficult for employers to facilitate an electric fleet, Hemerik said. “The power grid is overloaded at more and more locations,” she said. “Companies are not receiving higher-capacity connections and cannot expand charging stations.”
Many large employers already only allow employees to lease electric cars. But many small and medium-sized companies still allow fuel-powered company cars, NOS found when surveying leasing companies.
Despite this, leasing company Athlon thinks that the pseudo-final levy is having an effect. Smaller companies, particularly those with fewer than ten leased cars, are already opting for electric vehicles relatively more often. Before the levy’s announcement last year, 41 percent of small company orders were electric. After the announcement, that figure rose to 51 percent. Among medium-sized companies with 10 to 200 leased cars, electric orders remain stable at around 60 percent. And among large companies, it increased from 83 to 90 percent.
"The announcement of the pseudo-final levy acts primarily as an accelerator of a transition that we actively support," Willemijne de Wit of Athlon told the broadcaster. “Petrol and diesel cars are still ordered in 2026, but the choice to do so is being viewed much more critically.”
From September 17, 2030, exactly five years after the levy’s announcement on Budget Day 2025, the pseudo-final levy will also apply to lease cars with a contract from before January 1, 2027. So employers entering into a five-year lease contract with a fuel-driven car now might have to pay the penalty for the intervening months.
According to Athlon, companies still ordering petrol cars this year are more often opting for shorter terms than 5 years. “Because anyone who orders a petrol car with a 5-year contract now already enters the period in which the pseudo-final levy becomes financially relevant,” De Wit said.
