Tax breaks for bike commuters
This is a European trend, where commuting to work by bike is rewarded with tax breaks. Such economic incentives aim to increase the number of people commuting to work by bicycle and to reward sustainable commuting behavior. We have identified examples of this in, for example, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Italy. However, such initiatives also require sufficient infrastructure and end-of-trip facilities to support commuting by bicycle. In other words, tax breaks require some level of existing bike-friendliness in order to be effective. In Belgium, where tax breaks were introduced for commuters already in 1999 based on kilometers cycled, the numbers of commuters benefiting from this scheme increased by 30% between 2011 and 2015. Nine percent of Belgium’s workforce, or 400,000 Belgians,cycle to work and benefit from this scheme.