Investing from Belgium

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You can apply the Bogleheads investment philosophy if you live in Belgium, but you must be aware of a few things. The general guidance given in EU investing is applicable. The pages Investing from the Netherlands and UK investing also have good information, and are used here as a inspiration (or even plainly copied).

General approach
In Belgium, an investor is currently able to buy index funds in the form of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) through a bank or broker and there are companies offering index mutual funds.

The stock market in Belgium is very small, dominated by a few companies and not very diversified. As Belgium is very integrated in the EU, it is advised to consider the EU as the home-market.

Retirement investing in Belgium
In Belgium, retirement savings are often formulated according to a "four pillar" funding system.


 * The first pillar consists of a state pension (Rustpensioen) that provides a basic income, the level of which is linked to the statutory minimum wage and the amount of years that a person has contributed.
 * The second pillar consists of the collective pension schemes (groepsverzekering) linked to the employer. A majority of the Belgian employees employed in the private work space have some level of collective pension. Previously these pensions were often 'defined benefit', now they are more and more often defined contribution growing with a fixed percentage: 3,75% until end 2015; 1,75% from 2016 onward.
 * The third pillar includes the tax advantaged savings that provide 30% tax credit when investing; with an 8 percent 'liberating' taxation at age 60. (TBC if the same for lange termijn sparen).
 * The individual pension products mainly to which everyone can contribute voluntary. Current 940 Euro per year.
 * "Long-term" tax advantaged investing (Lange termijn sparen) for people who do not have a mortgage. Contribution and income limits are shown in the accompanying table.
 * The fourth pillar consists of free personal investments:
 * Many people own their house in Belgium. This is considered a very good investment. The mortgage payments provide some tax benefit.
 * Saving accounts and some others until 100000 Euro
 * Anything else

Rebalancing
Rebalancing is possible inside the third pillar by switching funds. One switch is often allowed without costs.

In the fourth pillar rebalancing is often possible at no tax cost as long as one does not sell positions obtained in the last six months.

Taxation of investments

 * 25% taxation on income (interest, dividends, etc; with an exemption (vrijstelling) for the first 1880 Euro of savings accounts
 * No taxation on capital gains
 * Except for 33% taxation on speculative short term gains if the position was held less then 6 months
 * No taxation on net-wealth

Which funds to invest in from Belgium
The EU investing wiki page mentions useful aspects of funds to consider, such as; whether the fund distributes dividends, if it is synthetic or physically replicating and the distinction between base currency and trading currency.

Type of ETF
For Belgium it seems best to invest through accumulating ETFs domiciled in Ireland:
 * Accumulating funds: because Belgium does not tax xxx (but it taxes dividends)
 * Domiciled in Ireland : This wiki page shows calculations for ETFs domiciled in Ireland- explain why better then Netherlands (NL), Luxembourg (Lux), France (Fr), United Kingdom (UK) or the United States (US).
 * The reason that international investors are often not advised to buy US domiciled assets is because of estate taxes, FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) and because their country does not have a withholding tax treaty (see also Nonresident alien taxation).

Equity
Like many international investors, people investing from Belgium need to approximate the global market; for example by:

To focus on Europe or the EURO the following funds can be used:
 * iShares MSCI Europe UCITS ETF (Acc) (SMEA): IER 0.33% : Europe
 * XXXX: Euro

Bonds
anyone any input?