Employers should not pay their employees a prepaid travel allowance next year. Due to the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the corona virus, they have to opt for a compensation per actual kilometer driven, HR and salary service provider ADP advises on Tuesday in an analysis of the terms of employment and compensation for the new year.
The rules for the travel allowance will change on 1 February. From that date, employers may reimburse travel expenses tax-free for an entire year to employees who come to the office for at least 128 days (60 percent of all working days in a year in full-time employment). ADP recommends reimbursing € 0.19 per kilometer driven instead. Due to all the uncertainty and the call to continue working from home anyway, it is very difficult to determine in advance whether those 128 days at the office will actually be achieved.
Too low rate?
Earlier this year, the Association of Business Drivers argued for a ‘fairer’ amount per kilometer. € 0.19 has been the applied rate since 2006, but VZR believes that a correction should be made. It provides an indication of a reimbursement of € 0.24 per kilometer for cars with a catalog value under € 20,000. Between € 20,000 and € 40,000 it should then be € 0.37 and for cars with a catalog value above € 40,000 even € 0.49.
In addition to travel allowance, various employers are already looking at ‘home work allowance’. After all, as a working person at home you incur more costs than usual. In many cases there is not yet compensation for this and employers are now withdrawing the fixed travel allowance. This previously (partly) compensated for the home working costs.