The mobility budget allows employees to exchange their company car — or the right to use one — for an annual budget to be divided between three pillars with the aim of promoting more sustainable mobility. One of these pillars allows for the financing of accommodation costs, provided that the home is located within a 10 km radius of the usual place of work. If the employee works from home most of the time, the employee's home can be considered the usual place of work and the employee can use their mobility budget to finance these accommodation costs. With the return to the office and the reduction in teleworking imposed by many companies, one question arises: can employees still use their mobility budget for their housing costs?
Mobility budget: brief overview of the concept
The mobility budget is an amount that employees receive from their employer to compensate them for giving up the company car they had or were entitled to.
This budget can be used freely by the employee to be divided between three different pillars (or used entirely in a single pillar), from among the pillars offered by the employer:
- 1st pillar: an environmentally friendly company car;
- 2nd pillar: sustainable means of transport, including housing costs (rent, interest and mortgage capital repayments) and/or the third pillar;
- 3rd pillar: a residual balance.
The mobility budget is an attractive tool because it benefits from favourable tax and social security arrangements. This means that the choices a worker makes in the second pillar are exempt from tax and social security contributions.
As a result, the second pillar, and especially the option of allocating one's mobility budget to housing costs, is often offered by employers in order to provide workers with a higher net income.
Although the measure has not yet been formalised in law, the federal government plans to oblige employers, from 2026 onwards, to offer a mobility budget to all employees who have or are entitled to a company car.
Housing costs and the concept of “usual place of work”
The possibility of using the mobility budget (or part of it) to pay for housing costs is conditional on the employee's home being located within a 10 km radius (as the crow flies) of the employee's usual place of work.
The law does not define the concept of “usual place of work”, but the administration considers it to be the place where the employee performs most of their work.
In addition, the usual place of work is determined on a calendar month basis. If there are several usual places of work during the same calendar month, the usual place of work for that month is the place where most of the working hours were performed during that month.
With the widespread use of teleworking in recent years, a worker's usual place of work may be their home, provided that the employer can justify this. In this case, the distance requirement is automatically met since the home coincides with the place of work.
Return to the office: risk of losing the benefit
With many companies gradually imposing a return to the office, the situation is becoming more complex.
Consider the case of an employee who works mainly from home and allocates their mobility budget to their housing costs. This worker's home is considered their usual place of work. If this person is now required to visit the company's premises more often, these premises could be considered their usual place of work. If they are located more than 10 km from their home, the worker would no longer be able to allocate their mobility budget to their housing costs. The portion of the mobility budget that would still be allocated to their housing costs would no longer benefit from the favourable tax and social security regime applicable to the second pillar of the mobility budget.
Therefore, it is in the interest of companies to adopt a proactive approach to managing the mobility budget in order to avoid potential misunderstandings when teleworkers return to the office.
By Maxime Nyamabu, Associate Altius
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