Business mileage log in Europe: what tax offices require, country by country (with template)

A business mileage log is a record of each work journey: the date, the odometer reading, where the trip started and ended, why it was made and how many kilometres it covered. In some European countries it can cut a driver's company car tax (the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland); in others it backs tax-free mileage allowances, VAT recovery or the proof that a pool car is not used privately (Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the UK).

This guide sets out what each country uses the log for, which columns make it valid, what happens when it is not, and when keeping one is worth the effort, with worked examples. It ends with a template that works across Europe and compares five ways of keeping a log, from paper to connected car data, the method Voltaback uses to capture mileage for its client fleets without typing and without sharing location with the company.

What a business mileage log is for

The same log serves different purposes depending on the country and on whose car it is.

Two distinctions shape everything else. First, company car or own car: for a company car, the log is about private use; for the employee's own car, it is about business kilometres. Second, flat rate or actual use: where the law offers a flat benefit, the log is an option that pays off only for low private mileage; where there is no flat rate, it is the only evidence available.

The log compared by country

Sources: Belastingdienst, rittenregistratie, § 8 EStG, Guichet.lu, company cars, FTA, salary certificate guidance 2026, Reglamento del IRPF, AT, art. 24 CIRS, GOV.UK, mileage rules.

The sections below explain the countries where the log changes the tax bill most.

Netherlands: the sluitende rittenregistratie

A Dutch employee can avoid bijtelling on a company car by proving no more than 500 private km per calendar year. This needs a Verklaring geen privégebruik auto, requested from the Belastingdienst and given to the employer, plus a complete trip log (sluitende rittenregistratie).

According to the Belastingdienst, the log must state:

• make, type and registration number of the car, and the period of use;
• per trip: date, odometer reading at start and end, departure and arrival address;
• the route, if it was not the usual one;
• whether the trip was business or private;
• the private detour kilometres when a trip mixes business and private.

A return trip to an appointment counts as two trips. Unlike in most countries, home-to-work trips count as business kilometres in the Netherlands. A system with the Keurmerk RitRegistratieSystemen is presumed complete by the Belastingdienst.

If the driver goes over 500 private km, the declaration must be withdrawn immediately, and the Belastingdienst can issue an additional assessment for the period before. Source: Belastingdienst, verklaring geen privégebruik.

Germany: the ordnungsgemäßes Fahrtenbuch

In Germany, private use of a company car is taxed by default with the 1 % rule: 1 % of the gross list price per month, reduced to 0.25 % for most battery electric cars, plus a charge for home-to-work trips. Instead, the employee can tax the actual share of private use, worked out from the full costs of the car and a proper logbook (§ 8(2) sentence 4 EStG).

German tax offices and courts are strict. A valid Fahrtenbuch is:

• contemporaneous: written at the time, not reconstructed at year end;
• complete and continuous: every trip, with the odometer at start and end, so the totals match the car's mileage;
• detailed for business trips: date, destination, purpose and the business partner visited, with any detours;
• tamper-proof: an electronic logbook must make later changes impossible, or document them visibly. A spreadsheet that can be edited freely is rejected.

For private trips, the kilometres are enough; home-to-work trips must be marked as such. If the logbook is found invalid, the tax office falls back on the 1 % rule for the whole year. Source: Steuerschroeder, requirements for an electronic logbook.

A separate rule also exists: after a traffic offence where the driver cannot be identified, the authorities can order a logbook for the vehicle for a set period (§ 31a StVZO). Source: § 31a StVZO.

Luxembourg and Switzerland: logbook or flat rate

Both countries let employer and employee choose between a flat benefit and the actual private use.

Luxembourg. The flat benefit is a percentage of the catalogue price per month: 0.5 % or 0.6 % for zero-emission cars depending on consumption, up to 2 % for the most polluting combustion cars. The alternative is a logbook: private kilometres, including the commute between home and work, are multiplied by the car's cost per kilometre. Because commuting counts as private, the logbook rarely pays off for cross-border workers, who make up almost half of employees and often drive long distances to work. Source: Klima-Agence, benefits in kind for company cars.

Switzerland. Private use is declared on the salary certificate either at the flat 0.9 % of the purchase price per month, or as the actual private kilometres from a logbook multiplied by CHF 0.75. The tax administrations accept the logbook only if it is complete and kept throughout the year. Source: SSK, salary certificate FAQ 2026.

Belgium: no logbook method for the benefit in kind

In Belgium, the benefit in kind of a company car is calculated with a flat formula based on the list price, CO2 emissions and age of the car. It does not depend on kilometres driven, so a logbook cannot reduce it.

The log still pays off in three cases:

• VAT: a company may document the business share of each car with a full trip record (the logbook method), which can recover more VAT than the flat or semi-flat methods.
• Pool cars: a trip record shows that a car is not available for private use, so no benefit in kind applies.
• Self-employed drivers: the log justifies the business share of car costs.

Source: Securex, private and business use of a company car.

Southern Europe: the log backs own-car allowances

In Spain, Italy and Portugal, the log matters mostly when employees use their own car for business.

• Spain: the employer may pay up to €0.26 per km tax-free for business trips in the employee's own car. It does not apply to company cars, but for those, a reliable record of business and private kilometres decides the taxation of private use and the VAT deduction.
• Italy: own-car allowances are calculated with the ACI cost per km for the car model, and are tax-free for trips outside the municipality of the workplace when documented.
• Portugal: a mileage map (mapa de quilómetros) is indispensable when the company pays kilometres in the employee's own car; without it, the company cannot deduct the cost. For a company car there is no general legal logbook obligation, but a reliable record protects the costs in a tax inspection.

Sources: Agenzia delle Entrate, resolution 92/E of 2015, OCC, company car allocation to employees.

UK: business mileage behind tax-free payments

In the UK, the log backs every mileage allowance (55p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles in the employee's own car from 6 April 2026, then 25p) and every per-mile fuel or electricity payment for a company car. HMRC prescribes no format, but the record should show date, start, destination, purpose and miles. Ordinary commuting between home and a permanent workplace is private travel, which is the most common error in UK logs. Source: HMRC 490, chapter 3. UK readers will find the full detail in our UK edition.

Is commuting business or private?

The answer differs from one country to the next, and it is the first thing to settle in a group-wide policy.

A driver who moves between countries, or a fleet manager who applies one country's habit to another, gets this wrong easily. Write the rule for each country in the car policy.

When is a logbook worth it? Two worked examples

For electric company cars, the flat benefit is already low in most countries, so the logbook pays off less often than for a diesel.

Germany, electric car. Gross list price €50,000, 0.25 % rule: €125 a month, €1,500 a year, plus the commuting charge. Logbook method: the car's annual cost counted for tax (only a quarter of the depreciation or lease for an EV, plus insurance, energy and maintenance) is, say, €6,000 for 25,000 km, so €0.24 per km. With 3,000 private and commuting km, the benefit is €720. The saving is about €780 a year of taxable benefit, worth roughly €300 of tax for the employee, against the effort of a strict log all year. For a diesel at 1 %, the same driver would save several thousand euros of taxable benefit.

Switzerland, electric car. Purchase price CHF 55,000, flat 0.9 %: CHF 495 a month, CHF 5,940 a year. Logbook: 4,000 private km x CHF 0.75 = CHF 3,000. Here the saving is large because the Swiss flat rate does not distinguish electric cars, so a logbook can pay off for drivers with little private use.

Netherlands. The question is binary: under 500 private km a year, no bijtelling at all; above it, full bijtelling. A logbook is only worth keeping if the car really is almost never used privately.

Electric company cars: what changes for the log

Electrification shifts the role of the log in three ways.

• The benefit is already low. Germany taxes most battery electric cars at 0.25 %, Austria applies no benefit to zero-emission cars, and Luxembourg uses its lowest rates for them. The logbook method therefore pays off less often than for a diesel, except in Switzerland and the Netherlands, where the rules do not depend on the drive train in the same way.
• Energy is reimbursed differently. With a fuel card, the company sees every litre. With home charging, the company reimburses electricity the driver has paid for. In most continental countries that reimbursement is based on kWh, not kilometres, so the log alone is not enough: the kWh charged at home must be measured.
• Mileage becomes a control. Kilometres and kWh should tell the same story. A car that covered 1,500 km in a month should have used about 300 kWh; a claim of 600 kWh is worth a question. Combining both data sets in one place makes these checks automatic.

Mileage log template

A template that works across Europe, with country add-ons:

Country add-ons:

• Netherlands: route if different from the usual one; keep a separate line for each leg of a return trip.
• Germany: business partner visited, and mark home-to-work trips; no blank lines, no later edits.
• Luxembourg and Switzerland: total private and commuting km at year end, plus the car's full cost if you use the logbook method.
• Spain, Italy, Portugal: the vehicle model and the allowance rate for own-car trips.
• EV company cars: whether the energy came from home or public charging, when energy is reimbursed per km.

Keep one log per vehicle, not per driver, if several people use the car, and reconcile the odometer each month with the car's own reading.

Why mileage data matters beyond tax

Even where no tax office asks for a log, reliable mileage per vehicle pays for itself in fleet management.

1. End-of-lease excess mileage. Lease contracts fix a mileage, for example 120,000 km over 48 months. Excess kilometres are charged at the end, often in the order of €0.05 to €0.15 per km depending on the car and the lessor. A driver who covers 38,000 km a year on a 30,000 km contract ends up 32,000 km over: at €0.08 per km, that is €2,560 billed at return. Seen after 12 months, the contract can usually be adjusted for much less.

2. Maintenance and safety. Services, tyre changes and inspections follow mileage. Without readings, the fleet manager relies on the driver to remember, and warranty or lease conditions can suffer when a service is missed.

3. Benefit and cost allocation. In countries with a logbook method, private kilometres decide the benefit. Everywhere, kilometres allow costs to be allocated by department, project or client, and private use to be recharged where the policy says so.

4. CO2 reporting. Companies reporting under the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) must report the emissions of their fleet. Fuel cards cover combustion cars, but for EVs charged at home, mileage and kWh are the only reliable basis. A per-vehicle monthly figure makes the report auditable.

Six mistakes that invalidate a log

1. Rebuilding the log at year end from memory or calendar entries.
2. Odometer gaps: the end reading of one trip does not match the start of the next.
3. Missing purpose or contact for business trips, enough for a German tax office to reject the whole log.
4. Treating commuting the wrong way for the country concerned.
5. Editing past entries in a spreadsheet without a trace.
6. One log per driver instead of per car, so trips by a second driver are missing.

Most of these disappear when the odometer comes straight from the car and the driver only classifies trips, or does nothing at all for monthly totals.

Pool cars and shared vehicles

Pool cars raise a specific question: proving that nobody uses them privately. Across Europe, the typical conditions are the same in spirit: the car is available to several employees, is not normally kept at an employee's home overnight, and any private use is incidental. A trip record per car, with the driver for each trip and the overnight location shown as the company site, is the simplest evidence. In Belgium, it avoids the car being treated as a company car with a benefit in kind; in the Netherlands, a pool car without a log may trigger bijtelling for the employees who take it home.

Five ways to keep a log, compared

The trend is clear: the less the driver types, the more reliable the log. The question then becomes who sees what.

How long to keep the log

Sources: § 41 EStG, IBR-IRE, archive retention periods, GOV.UK, PAYE record keeping.

Privacy: what the employer may see

A detailed trip log shows where a person went. That is personal data under the GDPR, and for private trips it is sensitive in practice even if not legally "special category" data.

• The employer needs totals and business trips, not the address of every private journey.
• Data protection authorities across Europe consider continuous tracking during private use rarely justified. Portuguese courts have upheld a fine of almost €15,000 against a company that monitored an employee's car by GPS. Source: Postal, Lisbon Court of Appeal ruling.
• In Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, the works council or employee representatives must be involved before introducing a system that can monitor drivers.
• Ask your provider what the employer can see, and whether private trips can be hidden.

Our guide on tracking company vehicles under the GDPR covers the rules country by country.

Rolling out a reliable log in four steps

1. Define what each team needs. Payroll needs private km or the benefit method; finance needs business km for VAT and costs; the fleet needs odometers for lease contracts and maintenance.
2. Fix one reading date. The last day of each month for every car, so the figures match payroll and lease reports.
3. Remove typing wherever possible. Every manual entry is a source of gaps, and in Germany a reason for rejection.
4. Connect the data to the right tools: payroll for benefits, accounting for VAT, the fleet tool for maintenance and end-of-lease excess mileage.

For energy reimbursed per km or per kWh, our guide to EV charging expense claims explains what evidence goes with the mileage.

Capturing mileage without typing

Voltaback reads each vehicle's mileage directly from the car's built-in connectivity, for more than 48 car brands, with no box to install and no typing by the driver. Electric and combustion cars can be connected; setup takes about 2 minutes per driver, and activation follows the manufacturer's validation.

• Automatic mileage: odometer readings from the car, monthly totals per vehicle, a reliable base for payroll, tax and fleet costs.
• No hardware: nothing to fit, nothing to remove at the end of a lease.
• Beyond mileage: consumption, eco-driving, alerts and maintenance in the same platform, including petrol and diesel cars.

The company never receives the drivers' geolocation, the platform is GDPR compliant and ISO 27001 certified since 2 December 2025. See how fleet telematics works, and how fleet mileage tracking fits with the taxation of electric company cars.

Stop typing mileage

A mileage log is only as good as the habits of the person who keeps it. Reading mileage from the car removes the habit from the equation, in every country of your fleet.

Talk to our telematics team to see automatic mileage on your own fleet.