Home-work trip, no taxes on car sharing and electric car recharging

Car-sharing, shared electric scooters and scooters, and charging electric cars or motorbikes paid for by the employer and made available to employees via an app to cover the home-work commute do not constitute income for the latter. The Inland Revenue Agency considered that the sustainable mobility solutions put forward by a company in interpello 74/2024 fall within the provisions on corporate welfare of the Income Tax Consolidation Act.

So green light to the tax relief, bearing in mind, however, that the solution proposed by the company also includes measures to prevent abuse. These include an expenditure ceiling, the limitation of the time of use of the services (corresponding to entry and exit from the workplace), correspondence between the amount of electric recharges and the days of actual presence at work. Moreover, sustainable mobility solutions are not available to those who already have a car for mixed use. Therefore, in the hypothesised welfare plan, employees will be able to use shared mobility services or top-ups by booking and managing them via an app and without paying for them directly, as the related costs will be borne directly by the company. The relative economic value of the benefits used will not be taxable for employees.

Obviously, according to the regulatory provisions of corporate welfare, the services must be made available to all employees or to categories. In this regard, in its recent Interpretation 57/2024, the Revenue Agency recalled that categories of employees are those provided for by the Civil Code, such as managers or workers, those linked to a qualification, level or type (workers who work a certain shift, for example). On the other hand, it is not permissible to identify 'categories' on the basis of personal or family characteristics or conditions.