DriveHubCountry guide · Netherlands
Driving a company car privately in the Netherlands — the 500 kilometre line, and what crossing it costs
The registration has one job
The rittenregistratie is not a general trip log, and reading it as one is how people build a careful record that still fails. Its purpose is narrow and worth saying out loud: it exists to prove that a company car was driven no more than 500 private kilometres in a calendar year (Wet LB art. 13bis lid 3), and therefore that no bijtelling is due.
That is the whole point of the exercise. The requirements in Uitvoeringsregeling loonbelasting 2011, artikel 3.13 are strict because the document is evidence in a dispute about a threshold, not a diary.
If instead you use your own car and are reimbursed per kilometre, there is no prescribed form at all — only an administration that stands up.
What artikel 3.13 asks for
About the car: make, type and registration, and the period it was available to you.
And per trip:
- The date
- The odometer reading at the beginning and at the end
- The beginning and ending address
- The route driven, where it differs from the most usual one
- The character of the trip — business or private
The route condition catches people. It is not "record the route"; it is "record it when you did not take the usual one", which is exactly the trip you will not remember having taken differently.
What crossing the line costs
The bijtelling is imposed for the whole year, plus a naheffingsaanslag. Not for the month you went over, and not pro rata. Dutch case law on rejected rittenregistraties is extensive and unforgiving, which is the practical reason to treat the 500 km as a hard budget rather than a target.
500 kilometres a year is under ten a week. A single weekend trip can be a fifth of the annual budget.
The 500 km test is about income tax. If an employee pays the business for private use of the car, the btw on that payment follows its own rules: see btw on an employee's own contribution.
Why an app rather than a notebook
Nothing above requires software; a notebook with those fields is fine. What software changes is which failure you get. The number that goes missing is never the distance — it is the address you set off from, the fact that this particular Tuesday you took the ring road, and the private trip you did not think to write down because it was three kilometres.
With location access set to Always, DriveHub records every drive in the background — and if it ever misses one, it tells you. Private drives are included, and it asks afterwards which were business, so the private trips are in the record whether or not you thought about them at the time. Where it may have missed a drive, it shows you, so you can recover it or add it. That is the half of a 500 km case that people lose.
The report prints the car's make, plate and the period it was available, and for every trip the date, the odometer at the start and end, both addresses — private trips included — and whether it was business or private. Where a drive ran well longer than your usual one between the same places, DriveHub asks why and prints your answer.
What it does not print is the route itself as a map. It keeps the GPS track, but on the report a deviating route appears as your note, not as a drawn line.
This page states what the regulation itself says, and names it so you can check. It is not tax advice. It can't account for your circumstances. Where money is involved, ask your accountant — and bring the administration.
Do it in DriveHub
Count your drive to work in the Netherlands →
Woon-werkverkeer: mark it Commute, read the IB and VAT card and set a Custom Rate.
The full rule for Netherlands, with the instruments it comes from: mileage log requirements in the Netherlands.