Dutch petrol excise is 84.47 cents a litre in 2026 and diesel 55.23, and both rates are written to run to 31 December

Of every litre of Euro 95, 84.47 cents is excise duty. That figure is on no forecourt price board. It sits in the Customs tariff list of excise and consumption tax, in the 1 April edition: unleaded light oil, 844.69 euro per 1,000 litres, in force since 1 January 2026. Diesel on the same list is 552.29 euro per 1,000 litres, or 55.23 cents a litre. Meanwhile the government's own consumer page on the reduced fuel excise still shows 0.79 and 0.52 euro a litre in its infographic, which are the 1 July 2023 figures, still visible as an earlier line on that same tariff list.

• The Customs tariff list: unleaded light oil is 844.69 euro per 1,000 litres from 1 January 2026, and the previous line is 789.10 euro from 1 July 2023. (source 1)
• Same list: diesel is 552.29 euro per 1,000 litres from 1 January 2026, and LPG is 369.02 euro per 1,000 kilos. (source 1)
• On top of the excise sits a stockholding levy of 8.00 euro per 1,000 litres, unchanged since 1 April 2013 and the same for petrol and diesel. (source 1)
• The government page states that the reduced rates apply up to and including 31 December 2026, that the 2026 reduction is smaller than in earlier years, and that no inflation correction was applied. (source 2)
• VAT is charged on the price including the excise, at 21 percent for fuel; the Dutch motoring association calls this layer tax on tax outright. (source 3)

To work out your own annual bill, start with litres: kilometres a year divided by litres per 100 kilometres, times one hundred. Fifteen thousand kilometres at six litres per hundred is 900 litres. Then apply the tax. Petrol is 0.84469 a litre plus the 0.008 stockholding levy, so 0.85269, and VAT sits on top of that layer, which makes the tax actually leaving your pocket 0.85269 times 1.21, about 1.03 euro a litre. Nine hundred litres is therefore roughly 928 euro a year. None of that moves with the oil price; it is fixed on every litre.

The 2027 rate has not been published, so nobody can calculate next year's increase today, and every figure circulating is an estimate. What you can do is write down the number above. When the new tariff list appears, subtract 0.84469 from the new rate, multiply by your own litres, multiply by 1.21, and the answer is available the same day. The government page says only that the reduction runs to 31 December; it does not say what replaces it on 1 January.

One column on the same list is worth putting beside it. Leaded light oil never received this discount, and it climbed through 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 to 1,115.94 euro per 1,000 litres. The 271.25 euro gap against unleaded is not a preview of next year, because the two fuels are taxed differently to begin with, but it does show what a column that was never frozen looks like: it moves every year.

The petrol against diesel gap is also yours to calculate. 552.29 against 844.69 is 29.24 cents a litre, which becomes 35.38 cents once VAT is applied. When you next change car, multiply that single figure by your own annual litres and you have what the fuel type alone is worth, kept separate from the purchase price and the servicing.

Hokimi field note: do not read tax rates off a news article in the search results. The Customs tariff list is a PDF with a page per fuel and two columns per page, the date a rate took effect and the rate itself. A change adds a line and every historical line stays, so you can see at a glance which band you are currently in. The government's public-facing page updates slowly, and where the two disagree the tariff list is the one that governs.