Dutch road tax 2026: hydrogen drivers can no longer verify their own bill

A Toyota Mirai owner in Heerlen pays 1,008 euros in road tax this year. The same car in The Hague: 1,103 euros. The 95-euro gap is entirely down to provincial surcharges — by design. Provinces have set their own rates since 1981. The real problem in 2026 lies elsewhere: Dutch drivers can no longer verify their own tax bill.

No more rate table

The Dutch tax authority (Belastingdienst) no longer publishes a rate table per weight class on its website. No PDF, no bracket boundaries (951–1050 kg, 1051–1150 kg, and so on), no breakdown of the national portion versus the provincial surcharge. Anyone wanting to know the rate enters a fictitious car into the online calculator and gets a single final number back. How that number is built up stays inside the tool.

Three sources, three answers

H2 Rijders entered the same Toyota Mirai II (reference weight 1,895 kg) into three public sources: the Belastingdienst calculator itself, the BOVAG/CBS table and the ANWB table. The result was three different sets of surcharge percentages across the twelve provinces.

• Nine of twelve provinces in the BOVAG/CBS table deviate from the Belastingdienst.
• In the ANWB table that figure is ten.
• The ANWB sits structurally two to five percentage points too low.
• BOVAG/CBS has larger outliers: Drenthe fifteen points too low, Utrecht eleven, Zuid-Holland over fifteen.

The likely cause: eleven provinces adjusted their surcharges in December 2025. Public tables were frozen at different moments. None of the three sources states which reference date their figures are based on.

How the tax is built up

Dutch road tax has two parts. A national portion is levied by weight and fuel, in 100-kilo brackets. On top of that, provinces add surcharges: a percentage uplift on the national portion, set by the provincial council, with a legal maximum of 145.3% in 2026. The 2026 tax plan raised the national portion by 2.9%.

An extra layer for hydrogen and EVs

Since 1 January 2026, hydrogen and fully electric passenger cars receive a 30% discount on the total amount, replacing the more generous earlier discount. That so-called 70% rule applies to both the national portion and the provincial surcharge. An error in either part feeds through to the final bill. To check whether the discount has been applied correctly, you first need to know what it is being applied to — and right now, an ordinary citizen cannot do that.

By design, not by accident

The variation between provinces is defensible: provinces fund part of their own budgets and may set their own rates within legal limits. The problem is transparency. An income-tax assessment can be reconstructed to the cent using public tables. A road-tax assessment cannot, in 2026.

One PDF would solve it

The fix requires no legislative change. A single complete rate table, published annually on data.overheid.nl by 31 December before the tax year: the national portion per weight class and fuel, and the surcharges per province. One document, one source, one reference date. Until that arrives, journalists, industry bodies and motoring associations will keep reverse-engineering what, in a properly documented system, would simply sit in a table.

Sources

• H2 Rijders research, May 2026
• Belastingdienst – Increase in road tax rates 2026
• Dutch government / Ondernemersplein – Extended road tax discount for electric and hydrogen cars
• Dutch Motor Vehicle Tax Act (Wet MRB 1994)
• Belastingplan 2026 (Tax Plan 2026)
• BOVAG/CBS and ANWB rate overviews (reference date unknown)