Hi Parker,
yep. What we have here in NL, is that you have to add a percentage of the catalogue-price of your company car to your income. The tax office sees the benefit you have from your company car as income.
If you don't mind at all, and buy or lease an S-class (say an S 350 bluetec) of +/- 95.000 euros, you have to add 25% of this amount to your income over which you have to pay taxes. Income tax varies from 37% to 52% here, but you will be in the 52% category if you can afford an S class Mercedes
This means that you have to pay income tax over 95.000 x 0.25 = 23.750 euros. This means paying 23.750 x 0.52 = 12.350 to the IRS, every year, as long as you are making more than 500 km private use of the company car per year.
On the other hand, if you buy or lease a Tesla, also costing 95.000 in reasonable spec (nothing wild, just the base 85kWh version with supercharger, satnav etc) you can avoid paying this amount, for taxation of EVs (and REx or hybrid <50 gr CO2/km) is set to 0% up till 31-12-2013. After this, EV's will be taxed at 7% of their cataloge-price. Meaning, for the prospective Tesla owner, paying taxes over 6.650 euros, meaning 3.458 every year. This is money out of (private) pocket totalling 17.290 in five years of ownership/lesseeship. You'll understand that most people do not want to pay this...
Steven
PS: there is also a tax break granted buying an EV, but this seems not to be altered after 31-12-2013 (for now... dutch governement is sort of acting randomly lately)
And another PS: if you earn more, you have to pay more taxes (who whould have guessed), so you have more to gain by buying an EV before 31-12-2013, hence the success of the more expensive EVs/hybrids in NL.