Two taxes where there used to be one

A services company assigns three cars to its activity and reimburses 22 000 kilometres to a salesperson driving their own. It believes it owes one tax, and that salesperson's car to be out of scope. It owes two taxes, that car counts, and a 15 000 € reduction adjusts the total. Before you read on: how many reimbursed kilometres make a car taxable?

One tax on carbon, one on air

Passenger vehicles are covered by two distinct taxes on assigning vehicles to economic purposes: the annual tax on carbon dioxide emissions, and the annual tax on air pollutant emissions.

Those two taxes replaced the company vehicle tax in a single move. The change is not cosmetic: two separate bases, two different scales, and one single return that carries both of them.

Sole proprietorships are exempt from both of them. The BOFiP puts it in terms of legal status: exempt are the vehicles assigned to the economic activity of natural persons carrying on their activity in their own name, without a legal personality of any kind.

The vehicles covered are those in category M1, passenger cars bearing the VP marking on the registration document. They are designed to carry people and have no more than eight seats in all.

The employee's car counts too

A business that owns no car at all can be liable. Covered are those that bear the professional costs incurred by a natural person, employee or director, for the use or purchase of vehicles that do not belong to the business.

A weighting coefficient then adjusts the amount owed by the distance reimbursed over the year. Below 15 000 kilometres reimbursed over the taxation period, that coefficient is nil: the amount of tax is nil for that particular vehicle.

The coefficient then rises by bands, and stops mattering beyond 45 000 kilometres, where it has no effect. The salesperson at 22 000 kilometres therefore sits in the intermediate zone, with a coefficient of 25 %.

A reduction then adjusts the total owed. Businesses that bear such professional costs benefit from a reduction of 15 000 € on the annual taxes covering passenger vehicles, applied for each taxpayer and never per vehicle.

Two scales, and two official figures that diverge

The carbon dioxide tax follows a marginal scale by gram, the way income tax follows its bands. The BOFiP gives the worked example for 2026: at 100 grams, the annual charge comes to 213 €.

The air pollutant tax is a simpler affair: a flat charge per emission category, read straight off the windscreen sticker. On that very point, two official pages read on 11 September 2026 do not carry the same amounts.

The service-public fact sheet, checked in February 2026, gives for 2026 a charge of 130 € for category 1 and 650 € for the most polluting vehicles, and announces 160 € and 800 € for 2027.

The BOFiP, in its version in force since May 2025, still serves 100 € and 500 €. Both amounts are given here with their source and their date, rather than a single figure whose provenance would be unknown.

Reporting, and where

Reporting follows the business's VAT regime. Under the normal regime, the taxes are reported on form 3310-A, a schedule to the VAT return, filed online during the month of January following the taxation period.

Under the simplified regime, they are reported instead on form 3517, filed for the financial year during which the tax became chargeable. It is the very same document as the annual VAT return.