Company car tax (BiK) rates
The Benefit-in-Kind appropriate percentage — the share of a company car's value you're taxed on — for electric vs petrol cars, curated from HMRC and legislated years ahead.
An electric company car is taxed at 4% Benefit-in-Kind in 2026/27, versus 26% for an equivalent petrol car — and the electric rate is legislated to stay low, reaching 9% by 2029/30 (HMRC, curated by THRIVE).
Cite this
Company-car-tax (BiK) appropriate percentages, curated by THRIVE from HMRC. thrivefleet.co.uk/data/company-car-tax.
BiK % by tax year
Electric vs a representative petrol car (100-104 g/km)
| Category | Electric | Petrol |
|---|---|---|
| 25/26 | 3% | 26% |
| 26/27 | 4% | 26% |
| 27/28 | 5% | 26% |
| 28/29 | 7% | 27% |
| 29/30 | 9% | 28% |
Benefit-in-Kind tax is why electric company cars have taken off. You pay income tax on the "appropriate percentage" of a car's list price each year — so a 26% petrol car costs many times more in tax than a 4% electric one on the same list price. For a 40% taxpayer in a £40,000 car, that is the difference between a few hundred pounds a year and several thousand.
The rates are set in legislation years ahead, so the electric advantage is a known quantity a fleet can plan around: it narrows gradually but stays large through 2029/30. See the salary-sacrifice maths for what that means in take-home terms.
Appropriate percentages are curated from the primary HMRC sources, never scraped: the Appendix 2 guidance for current years, and HMRC's policy papers for 2027/28 and 2028/29–2029/30. A monthly drift-watch re-reads the Appendix 2 page and alerts us if a published band changes — it never overwrites the table automatically. The petrol comparator is a representative 100–104 g/km car. Figures under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Free JSON API — no key, open CORS, cache-friendly:
curl https://www.thrivefleet.co.uk/api/v1/bik{ "unit": "appropriate percentage (%)",
"rates": [ { "tax_year": "2026/27", "fuel": "electric", "appropriate_pct": 4 } ] }Attribution is requested, never required — see the data terms and the API guide.
What are the company car tax (BiK) rates for electric cars in 2026-27?
A zero-emission company car has an appropriate percentage of 4% for 2026/27 — you pay income tax on that share of the car's list price.
What will BiK rates be for electric cars in 2028 and 2029?
Legislation sets the zero-emission rate at 7% for 2028/29 and 9% for 2029/30 — rising 2 percentage points a year but still far below petrol.