INTEGRATED SERVICES
State Secretary Vijlbrief of Finance recently announced that as of January 1, 2021, employers will no longer be allowed to pay the fixed travel allowance untaxed for employees who work from home.
The consequence of this is that employers may only reimburse untaxed travel expenses for the days that the employee travels to work. Only if the employee travels to the fixed workplace for at least 36 weeks or 128 days in a calendar year, the employer can still grant an untaxed fixed travel allowance without this being at the expense of the free space.
The employer must communicate this new method of reimbursing travel allowances to the employees.
As a result of the State Secretary’s decision, employers could decide to stop paying the fixed travel allowance. The employer must inform the employee in good time (eg during the assessment interview at the end of the year or by means of a notification to all employees). The Works Council could be involved in this in both decision-making and communication.
Homework allowance
Many employers have continued to pay the fixed travel allowance this year in view of possible additional costs that employees incur for working from home. In a number of cases, a home work allowance was already paid without this being compulsory unless agreements had already been made via the collective labor agreement (CAO).
NB NIBUD has recently calculated that working from home costs an average of 2 euros per day.
Adjust benefits
No (legal) amendments have yet been introduced. However, various ideas have been put forward for the future since it is expected that employees will work from home much more after the Corona crisis.
