Guess what: which car will soon have to pay more tax: an economical Suzuki Ignis with a Smart Hybrid system with 83 hp or a Ram TRX with a 6.2 liter V8 and no less than 711 hp? You can already sense that it is a trick question. An entrepreneur does not have to pay BPM for his new pick-up this year, a private individual does for his passenger car. That will change next year, but how much more expensive will pick-ups become in the Netherlands?

The BPM tax for new cars depends on the emissions. According to the official American measurement, the emissions of the Ram TRX amount to a hefty 467 grams of CO2 per kilometer. If you were to apply the BPM table for passenger cars, you would have to pay almost 50,000 euros in BPM. Because with passenger cars it is like this: the higher the emissions, the more expensive the BPM per gram of CO2 becomes.

Price per gram lower for commercial vehicles

Different rules will apply to company cars next year. There will be one fixed amount per gram of CO2. This is currently 66.91 euros for company cars. This can be adjusted slightly for inflation, but for the time being we are using this amount. This is considerably less than the 549 euros per gram that private individuals have to pay per gram above 161 grams per kilometre.

And then the next problem: the American pick-ups are not officially supplied here by the manufacturers and therefore do not have type approval. The emissions that the car brands communicate in the home country may not be applied one-on-one. How does the Tax Authorities then determine how high the BPM for American pick-ups should be?

Here the pick-ups are measured again

Autobedrijf Jaarsma explains to TopGear that every pick-up in Germany undergoes the official WLTP measurement once. This is often done by an agency such as TÜV Nord or TÜV Sud. The Dutch RDW uses the German measurement to give the car an emission figure. And based on this figure, a BPM amount is then determined.

According to Jaarsma, the American measurement is actually somewhat more realistic than our WLTP measurement. That is nice for entrepreneurs, because the lower CO2 emissions according to the measurement save money. Incidentally, the Ram TRX from the calculation example will no longer be available new next year and if you import a company car with a year of construction before 2025, you still do not pay BPM.

How much more expensive will American pickup trucks become?

Let’s give concrete numbers. Pickups in the Netherlands will not suddenly become 50,000 euros more expensive, but somewhere between 15,000 and 30,000 euros. A Ford F-150 with a V6 engine emits less than a Ram pick-up with a V8 engine. For the Ford, entrepreneurs have to pay more than 18,000 euros extra in BPM and for the Ram almost 22,000 euros. A decent pick-up from Ford or Ram currently costs between 50,000 and 100,000 euros in the Netherlands without this BPM.

Many entrepreneurs are still quickly purchasing a new commercial vehicle or pick-up, so sales of American pick-ups with large engines are expected to drop significantly next year. Will 2025 be the year of the electric pick-up? Probably not. An F-150 Lightning always costs around 100,000 euros here and next year you should be able to drive a petrol pick-up for 70,000 euros.