As the title says, RTBF reports that a slim majority of Belgians was in favour of abolishing company cars, e.g. here: "A narrow majority of Belgians for the abolition of company cars"
Yesterday, media reported that Belgium is the country which taxes its citizens the most, e.g. here: "Belgium remains champion for highest tax burden despite small drop"
Do people want to be taxed even more?
https://old.reddit.com/r/belgium/comments/1cgnua9/yesterday_oecd_finds_nobody_pays_more_taxes_than/
Posted by benineuropa
12 Comments
What a lot of people do not seem to understand, is that taxation goes to the community, i.e. to ALL of us. It is the way to be a society, not a band of individuals. There is no problem inherent with taxation, if you receive the value of a working society in return.
It’s not about being taxed, it’s about taking steps to reduce car dependency. Fewer people consider cars for granted -> public transport becomes more used -> public transport improves.
At least works like that in my simple mind. I mostly care about transportation being accessible to all.
People want *other* people to be taxed more.
Company cars should be forbidden. It’s subsidized by the taxpayers who cannot benefit this advantage.
Didn’t your previous same post got deleted by the mods less than one hour ago?
The slim majority doesn’t have a company car.
The problem with company cars is two things in my opinion. One that it is subsidized by the state and see no reason why everyone needs to pay for people having a car. If the company wants to give people a car sure but they need to pay it whole on there own.
Two most people don’t have a company car from nurses to builders no one. Just a specific class of people get them.
Not for adding more taxes maybe on the ultra rich but not on the middle class.
My comment from the other thread before it got removed:
My personal take on this is that a company car does not make sense at all as a way of getting compensated. I will chose more wage over a car any day, even if that means paying “more” taxes. A car only has value when you use it. Not only is it completely worthless if you’re not using it frequently enough, it also just sits there and needlessly takes up infrastructure when you’re not using it. Increased wage I can spend on whatever I want, a car is only useful to go sit in traffic. No thank you.
On top of that, the subsidies of the cars come out of our taxes anyway, so we’re still collectively paying for it, to the tune of billions a year. The tax break for a minority of the population is being carried by the entire population, meanwhile the entire working population suffers from the high taxation it’s claiming to “solve”. For social security I have no problem with contributing even if I’m not directly benefiting from it, but for cars…. Yeah no, that money would be better spent on more useful things (like improving public transport).
In a country with as much traffic jams as Belgium, it’s just absurd for the government to subsidize office workers to get to their job by car.
I commute to my job by train. When I got my job I got to pick between train pass + slightly higher wage, or company car. I only use a car occasionally, so I don’t need my own, I just borrow my parents’ car when I need it. But if I weren’t in a situation where I could borrow a car, I would have to get one. And then the best financial decision, by far, would be to take the company car and not take the train pass. So I would commute by car instead of by train (because the train pass is expensive), adding to the ever worsening traffic jam problem.
So I’m financially incentivized to commute by car instead of by train, which is completely unreasonable policy.
Company cars are for me a symbol of ‘koterij’. Instead of tens of different constructions to reduce tax burden on an individual level, there should imo be a general decrease of the tax rate. Abolishing these constructs will however hurt some people while benefiting others. Most likely company car owners (or their employers) will be some of the most negatively impacted people, due to the size of the benefit. If the abolishment of company cars is part of such a reform, it doesn’t mean that abolishing them will result in an increase of the societal tax burden.
Thats not to say that specific tax advantages are to be avoided at all costs. If they nudge individual behaviour in a way that benefits the society i find them acceptable. I do not however see how company cars benefit the society.
Belgium is one of the most equal country in the World, wealth wise, I’m proud of that.
Belgium has a spending problem, not a tax rate problem.
– we dislike cars
– we dislike rich people not paying a fair share