Company car? Your ERE payout is yours
Do you drive an electric company car and charge at home? Every charged kWh earns an ERE payout • and it is yours, not your employer's or leasing company's.
On 3 August 2026 the Dutch tax authority confirmed in a formal position (KG:204:2026:16) that the payout is not wages. No payroll tax, no withholding by your employer.
// The position
What the tax authority decided
The payroll-tax knowledge group answered whether the ERE payout for charging a company car at home constitutes wages. The answer is no, along both routes through which something can be wages: your employer does not provide the benefit (the payout comes from the market, from fuel suppliers with a legal reduction obligation), and it is not a reward for work either.
In the knowledge group's words: charging the company car is not work, and you do it not as an employee but as a private user of the electricity grid. The result: no payroll tax on your ERE payout, even when the car belongs to the company.
Note: this page is informational and not tax or legal advice.
// Why
Why the payout belongs to you
The connection decides
ERE credits do not arise because a car drives, but because electricity flows through a grid connection. The rights belong to the EAN holder: the person whose name is on the home connection. That is you.
The mandate is personal
Only the EAN holder can issue the mandate to a registration provider. Your employer or leasing company cannot issue it on your behalf • the choice is yours.
Ownership is irrelevant
Even if the charging station is owned by the company or leasing company: for ERE purposes the grid connection counts, not who paid for the station. A built-in MID meter is required.
// Expense claims
Do you expense charging costs to your employer?
This is the one point to watch. If your employer reimburses actual charging costs at the integral cost price per kWh, the ERE payout lowers that cost price • and that can feed through into what you may expense.
The exception is in the position itself: if you and your employer make a businesslike arrangement for passing on energy at market rates, the ERE payout stays out of the equation entirely. What matters is the market price at the time of the agreement.
Joulo is building a solution for this: a model pass-on arrangement between you and your employer, at a market-rate kWh price, generated straight from your dashboard. That keeps your charging-cost reimbursement fiscally clean and you keep your full ERE payout. Until then, Joulo already provides a monthly or quarterly statement of your charging sessions for your expense claim.
// Integrations
Company charging station or locked to a lease platform?
Company charging stations often hang off the leasing company's or installer's platform. That is not a blocker: Joulo already has most integrations in place • 15 charger brands directly via cloud API, plus charging platforms, CPOs and energy companies, plus universal OCPP 1.6J. And if your platform is not among them yet, we build the integration. A MID meter in the charging station plus your mandate as EAN holder • nothing more is needed.
// For employers
Employer? This costs you nothing
The position removes the biggest uncertainty: you do not have to withhold payroll taxes on your employees' ERE payout. Let your employees keep it • it costs you nothing and raises the value of your mobility package. Just watch the per-kWh home-charging reimbursement: at integral cost price the ERE payout lowers that cost price, unless you agree a market-rate pass-on arrangement.
Joulo helps with the setup: the pass-on arrangement, the expense statement and reporting for HR and finance. Legal and tax advice remains with your own adviser.
// FAQ
Frequently asked questions
// Next step
Arrange it today
Signing up takes a few minutes, and charging sessions from 1 January 2026 onwards can be registered retroactively. So you lose nothing of what you have already charged this year.