Mandatory bicycle allowance as from 1 May 2023
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As of 1 May 2023, all private sector employees who cycle to work will be entitled to a bicycle allowance. Until now, this was not the case in all sectors. A more general right to a bicycle allowance has now been established in a new collective labour agreement, CLA no. 164. In this newsletter, we discuss what impact this has and to which companies this new national CLA applies.
Which allowance?
In order to encourage commuting by bicycle, the National Labour Council has decided that employees of the concerned companies are entitled to a bicycle allowance of € 0.27 per kilometre as from 1 May 2023.
This allowance is exempt from social security contributions and taxes and will be indexed annually. The employer must grant a bicycle allowance up to a maximum distance of 40 kilometres per day (20 kilometres there and 20 kilometres back).
Which companies?
The national CLA no. 164 applies in principle to all companies but is supplementary. This means that existing sector and company CLA’s that already grant a specific bicycle allowance will continue to apply.
There are several sectors and enterprises that have already concluded CLA on this subject. These existing CLA’s on bicycle allowances will remain unchanged by the introduction of this new CLA, even if the bicycle allowance is lower than € 0.27 per kilometre. For example, the lower bicycle allowance of the Supplementary Joint Industrial Committee 100 for blue-collar workers and 200 for white-collar workers will continue to apply.
There is also a transitional provision for joint industrial committees that were established for the first time since 1 January 2020, such as Joint Industrial Committee 335. Employers in this JIC should not yet grant this allowance between 1 May 2023 and 31 December 2023, in order to give the sector time to conclude its own sectoral CLA on this matter.
Conditions
In order to be entitled to the bicycle allowance, the employee must use the bicycle regularly for commuting. For example: the employee cycles to work once a week, or the employee cycles to work daily during a certain period.
Of course, the same (part of a) journey cannot be reimbursed twice. For example, if an employee already has a full-time annual train season ticket, he can no longer receive a bicycle allowance if he occasionally comes to work by bicycle for that same route.
Finally, the employee should sign a sworn statement stating the number of kilometres of the route and the number of days.
Action point
If it was not compulsory in your sector to give a bicycle allowance until now, you will as a rule have to do so from 1 May 2023. In that case, ask your employee who regularly travels by bicycle to sign a sworn statement and inform your Payroll Business Partner monthly about the bicycle allowance.
