The Tax Survey
An overview of the Belgian tax legislation

	Contents and purpose of the Tax Survey
	The applicable legislation
	Update
	To download the Tax Survey
	How to get a printed copy of the Tax Survey

		The archive of the Tax Survey

Contents and purpose of the Tax Survey

By publishing the "Tax Survey", the Research and Documentation Department of the Federal Public Service Finance aims at providing a regularly updated overview of the tax legislation in Belgium. The subject being particularly intricate, this brochure cannot of course cover every specific regulation: only the main features or the most frequently occurring cases will be described here.

First part:  direct taxation

The first part of the Tax Survey deals with direct taxation: personal income tax (PIT), corporate income tax (CIT), legal entities income tax (LEIT). The non-resident income tax (NRIT) is not dealt with; it is a specific domain one can only give a good perception of if the international agreements applicable to the bilateral situations are also dealt with.  The last chapters deal with withholding taxes and advance payments. This first part also deals with special corporate income tax regimes (advance ruling procedures, coordination centres, SICAV, etc.)

Second part:  indirect taxation

The second part of the survey deals with indirect taxation: VAT, registration duties, estate duties, excise duties, miscellaneous duties and taxes, excise duties, ecotaxes, etc.

This Memento only describes the taxes which are or were the responsibility of the Federal Public Service Finance. A certain number of those taxes are now the responsibility of the Regions. As a result, the information relating to the last-mentioned taxes is purely indicative.

Generally speaking, the Tax Survey does not deal with procedures (returns, inspection, disputes). 

Information providers

The authors of this publication are S. HAULOTTE and Ch. VALENDUC (Part I and Part III) and E. DELODDERE (Part II). They would like to thank their colleagues from the Research and Information Department and from the Federal and Regional Tax Administrations for their preliminary work, the observations and the translations made during the drawing-up of this Tax Survey.

Although the authors have taken particular care to ensure the reliability of the information given in this publication, the latter must not be considered as an administrative circular. The tax survey was written for purely documentary purposes at a general and global level.  No rights can be founded on it. The Research and Documentation Department is not authorized to answer queries with regard to the application of tax legislation to individual cases. The circulars this Tax Survey refers to are available in the "Fiscal database" (Fisconetplus) on the homepage of the website of the FPS Finance ("Fiscal discipline - Income tax - Administrative directives and comments - Circular letters"; only availabe in French and Dutch).

The Tax Survey is also available in Dutch and French. 

September 2011
E. DELODDERE      S. HAULOTTE    Ch. VALENDUC

Top

The applicable legislation (July 2011 issue)

Unless stated otherwise, the legislation described is the one which applies :

	to 2010 income (tax year 2011) in the matter of direct taxation, with the exception of withholding taxes (part I, chapters 1 to 4);
	on July 1st, 2011 as far as indirect taxation (part II) and withholding taxes (part I, chapters 5 to 7) are concerned.

Update

As heretofore, the printed version of the Tax survey will be updated once a year. The Tax Survey can now also be referred to on our website (http://docufin.fgov.be), where it can be downloaded as a pdf-file. Where important modifications in the tax legislation may occur in between two issues of the printed version, these changes will be made in the electronic version as soon as possible. 

Top

To download the Tax Survey (July 2011 issue)

Click on the references in the table to download the pdf-version of the integral Tax Survey or parts out of it.

Top

How to get a printed copy of the Tax Survey

You can order the printed version of the Tax Survey via the order page for publications of the FPS Finance.