✈️ Dutch flight tax rises up to 147% on 1 January. Has your 2027 budget priced it in?

This week

In three weeks the Dutch lower house votes on what your long-haul seats out of Amsterdam will cost next year. Today every passenger departing a Dutch airport pays the same flight tax: €30.25. From 1 January 2027 the tax depends on how far the trip goes. Europe stays almost flat at €31.04. Medium-haul (2,000–5,500 km, such as Turkey, Egypt and the UAE) rises to €49.87. Long-haul (over 5,500 km, including the US, India and China) rises to €74.81, unless parliament approves the cabinet's plan to cut that rate to €59.43. The vote on the 2027 tax plan is set for 12 November, and Dutch press says there's a real chance the package fails in the first round. Either way, a long-haul departure from the Netherlands costs €29 to €45 more in tax from January. Is that line in your 2027 budget yet?

Why it matters

1. Your 2027 tickets are already affected. The tax is set by the departure date, not the date you bought the ticket. A New York trip booked today for a 15 January departure falls under the 2027 rate.

2. A connection doesn't lower the tax. The passenger's final destination decides the rate, even with a change of planes on the way. Amsterdam to Frankfurt to Singapore is taxed as a long-haul trip, not a short hop to Germany.

3. The rate isn't final until parliament decides. If the cabinet's cut passes, long-haul is €59.43. If it doesn't, the €74.81 already in law applies. That's a €15.38 gap per departure, and you won't know which applies until mid-November at the earliest, after many 2027 budgets are signed off.

What this means for your program

• Count your 2026 departures from Dutch airports by band. Short, medium and long-haul. That's your 2027 exposure. For example, 200 long-haul departures means €5,836 to €8,912 more in tax next year.
• Budget at €74.81 until the vote. Plan for the higher figure, and if the cut passes, treat the difference as savings.
• Price a reroute on the whole trip, not just the tax. Departing from Düsseldorf avoids the Dutch tax but adds train time, and Germany has its own departure tax. The cabinet chose €59.43 specifically to match Germany's highest rate.
• Track taxes as their own line from January. If finance only sees one total per ticket, nobody will notice that the tax doubled while the fare stayed the same.

The numbers

• €30.25: today's Dutch flight tax per departing passenger, the same for every destination. (Rijksoverheid)
• €31.04 / €49.87 / €74.81: the three distance bands that apply from 1 January 2027 under the differentiated flight tax law passed by parliament in December 2025. (Rijksoverheid; Kennisdomein, 6 Oct 2026)
• €59.43: the cabinet's proposed long-haul rate in the 2027 tax plan, matching Germany's highest rate. (Business.gov.nl; Transport Online, 5 Oct 2026)
• 12 November 2026: the lower house vote on the 2027 tax plan. The Senate votes after that. (Nederlands Dagblad, 12 Oct 2026; Rijksoverheid)
• 5,500 km: the long-haul line, measured in a straight line from Amsterdam to the destination country's capital. By our calculation Washington is about 6,190 km away (long-haul) and Abu Dhabi about 5,165 km (medium-haul). (Kennisdomein, 6 Oct 2026)

Two tools built exactly for this moment

A tax change like this is easy to miss when it's hidden inside the ticket total. You only see it if every ticket and its taxes land in one place, broken out by line.

• Travel Code Expense Management →: receipt capture, automatic checks against your policy, and approval routing, with bookings and card transactions reconciled in one ledger. Air spend sits next to the trip it belongs to, and everything exports to Excel for your finance team.
• Travel Code Net-60 Card →: 60-day settlement at 0% interest, per-transaction visibility, and budget rules that auto-freeze at 80%. When a long-haul ticket costs more in January, you see it line by line the same day, not at quarter-end.

The bottom line

The Netherlands is moving from one flat flight tax to three bands, and long-haul gets the biggest increase. On 12 November parliament decides whether a long-haul departure costs €59.43 or €74.81 in tax, up from €30.25 today. Neither result helps your budget, and both apply to any ticket departing from 1 January, whenever it was bought. Count your Dutch departures, budget at the higher rate, and make sure finance can see taxes as a separate line. Then the vote only decides how much you save.

What's new at Travel Code

Did you know you can now see the taxes inside every booking? Travel Code orders now show the taxes included in the price and any fees payable at the property. The statement includes a tax breakdown, and a new tax report exports a summary by company, currency and month. Next year you'll be able to see exactly what the new Dutch rates add to your air spend. (Changelog →)

Sources

• Rijksoverheid — Belasting op luchtvaart
• Rijksoverheid — Plannen kabinet voor belasting op brandstof, vliegbelasting en reiskostenvergoeding
• Business.gov.nl — Flight tax on long-distance flights will increase less than planned
• Kennisdomein — Vliegbelasting 2027 per bestemming en wat er verandert (6 Oct 2026)
• Transport Online — Kabinet grijpt in bij vliegbelasting (5 Oct 2026)
• Nederlands Dagblad — De financiële gevolgen van wegstemmen Belastingplan (12 Oct 2026)

Travel Code helps corporate travel and finance teams see, control, and reconcile every dollar of trip spend in one platform. travel-code.com · Expense Management · Net-60 Card