Investing from Belgium



You can apply the Bogleheads® investment philosophy if you live in Belgium, but you must be aware of a few particularities. This page introduces a series of them. Please ask portfolio questions in the bogleheads forum and contact a professional advisor before acting on them.

The general guidance given in EU investing is applicable. The pages Investing from the Netherlands and UK investing also have useful information.

This page is not intended for US (tax) resident investors, as their situation is very specific.

Saving and investing in Belgium
The Belgian investor has access to:
 * Regulated and unregulated saving accounts (with government protection until 100,000 Euro).
 * Various instruments that offer protection of the principal: Certificate of Deposit (kasbons), term accounts, government bonds (staatsleningen or Obligations Linéaires -Lineaire Obligaties; abbreviated OLO, in one of these nice Belgian bilingual abbreviations), and corporate bonds.
 * Stocks:
 * Most Belgian retail banks offer access to several stock exchanges as most banks have an in-house broker.
 * Alternatively the Belgian investor can use one of the (foreign) often online low-cost brokers such as Interactive Brokers (IB).
 * Please note that the stock market in Belgium is very small, dominated by a few companies and not very diversified.
 * As Belgium is very integrated into the EU, investors seeking broader diversification can consider the EU as the home-market.


 * Many people (72% in 2014) own their house in Belgium. The mortgage payments provide some tax benefit.
 * Mutual funds and ETFs: 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. Please note that ETFs have a much smaller total expense ratio (TER) than the comparable Belgian mutual funds.
 * Saving through insurance contracts:
 * Tak-21 savings insurance (tak21-spaarverzekering) : life insurance insuring the combined premiums (after costs) and a guaranteed fixed return augmented with an optional bonus. There is government protection until 100,000 Euro.
 * Tak-23 investment insurance (tak-23 beleggingsverzekeringen) : life insurance investing in underlying mutual funds.
 * Tak-26: not an insurance, hence no premium tax of 2%, but no exception on tax on return.
 * The tax on the insurance premium (2%), the high total expense ratio (TER) (typically larger then 1.3%), and entry fees (typically 3%, even going up to 6%, but all negotiable) and exit fees for these funds are very high compared to what is commonly considered acceptable for Bogleheads.

Taxation of investments from outside of Belgium
Investors that hold funds that hold securities are taxed at multiple levels on dividends. Depending on the tax treaties there might be witholding taxes by the country of domicile of the asset before the Belgian Taxation applies. (For example,  US tax treaties or  US estate taxes.)

Taxation of investments by Belgium

 * 30% taxation on income from investments (interest, dividends, royalties received by the individual investor)
 * Except for the first 940 euro interest on regulated (gereglementeerde) savings accounts which is exempt. Interest above that is taxed at 15%.
 * Except life insurance that is not taxed on the return; if duration of the contract is longer then 8 years, or death-coverage more than 130% of the capital.
 * Except a few other other exceptions such as real-estate collective investment trusts (bevaks), social investments, and some other movable assets.
 * No taxation on capital gains, including the dividends immediately reinvested in accumulating funds.
 * Except for funds with more than 25% (to be updated in 2018) bonds; capital gain on bonds portion will subject to 30% tax.
 * No taxation on net-wealth. . Starting in 2018, there would be a yearly taxation of 0,15% on your investment account, if the amount is higher then 500k.
 * Belgium does impose an inheritance tax
 * Tax on stock exchange transactions (0.12%, 0.35%, 1.32%).

Retirement investing in Belgium
In Belgium, retirement savings are often formulated according to a "four pillar" funding system. The first two pillars are pensions, the third pillar is tax-advantaged savings and the fourth pillar are the different kinds of after-tax savings.

First and second pillar : pensions

 * The first pillar consists of a state pension (rustpensioen) that provides a basic income from age 67, 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 mostly 'defined contribution' by the employer. These have a guaranteed (accumulating) return (3.75% until the end of 2015; from 2016 onward this is 1.75% with a possible participation in the gains). A limited number pension schemes allow an extra personal contribution.

Tax-advantaged investments
The third pillar includes the tax advantaged investments. Two kinds of tax-advantaged saving exist: individual personal pension saving and the long term saving. The contracts are typical until age 60 or 65. The contributions result in a tax-credit of 30% (if you invest 960 euro maximum, or 25% if you invest the higher amount of 1200 euro) for the yearly investing. Withdrawals before the end of the contract are taxed 33%.


 * 1) The individual pension saving has a maximum contribution of 960 or 1200 euro per year.
 * 2) * One can invest via a bank or via life insurance.
 * 3) * One has the choice to save in a fund with guaranteed return (pensioenspaarverzekering) or to save indirectly in mutual funds (pensioenspaarfunds). For the insurance contracts, the underlying product is a Tak-21 or Tak-23 respectively.
 * 4) ** The pensioenspaarverzekering guarantees fixed return augmented with an optional bonus. The return is announced each year.
 * 5) ** The returns of the pensioenspaarfunds are determined by the underlying funds. The typical choices are defensive/moderate/aggressive. By law these funds are mixed funds with bonds and stocks, and they need invest the majority of theirs funds in European assets.
 * 6) ** At age 60 the balance is subjected to a 8% 'liberating' taxation. . No further taxation will happen.
 * 7) Long-term saving (Langetermijnsparen) through tak-21 insurance contracts for people who do not have a mortgage payment deduction. Contribution and income limits are shown in the accompanying table. At age 60 the balance is subjected to a liberating taxation Subsequent contributions still benefit from the tax-credit, and are free from any final taxation.

Rebalancing is possible inside the third pillar but one needs to remain within the same "type" to avoid taxation. One switch per year is often allowed without costs.

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 synthetically or physically replicating; and the distinction between base currency and trading currency.

Investors in Belgium have a large choice where to acquire their funds. Almost every bank provides the opportunity to buy bank-owned mutual funds and give access to the major stock exchanges for access to ETFs. In addition, domestic and international online brokers provide their services in Belgium. Please make your choice taking into account the transaction fees as well as the cost that you are charged for your portfolio; either fixed fee or fee per position. Please take into account that these fees are abject to change and also depend on your 'relation' and contract with the broker.

Type of ETF useful for investing from Belgium
In general it is good to select widely-diversified Euro-denominated low-cost ETF from a reputable ETF provider.

Belgian investors can reduce tax and compliance costs through non-registered accumulating ETFs domiciled in Ireland:
 * Since January 2018 the transaction tax for funds "not registered" in Belgium, but still registered in a different country of the European Economic Region (EER) has been lowered to 0,12%, as opposed to 1,32% for funds "registered" in Belgium, and 0,35% if not registered in the EER.
 * For equity, Accumulating ETF funds: because Belgium taxes distributed dividends at 30% (but does not tax reinvested dividends, nor taxes capital gains if the fund is held longer than six months).
 * Domiciled in Ireland : because Ireland does not tax foreign investors on dividends or estates and provides access to a wide treaty network.
 * Nonresident alien & Irish ETFs explains how ETFs domiciled in Ireland are more cost effective than holding US domiciled funds.
 * International investors are often advised not to buy US domiciled assets because of US estate taxes, FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) and because their country does not have a withholding tax treaty (see also Nonresident alien taxation).
 * Belgians investing directly in US-domiciled ETFs could qualify for the 15% US withholding tax rate on dividends, but since US domiciled ETFs are almost always distributing dividends, Belgians will suffer on top of that a 30% tax from the Belgian government and hence only retain 59,50% of the original dividend.
 * Also, since 2018 it seems almost impossible for European investors to buy US-domiciled ETS as the US providers do not seem to want to comply with the European legislation.
 * Euro-denominated ETF: avoid the fees of currency exchange fees when buying or selling.

The site justETF is a place to start searches for non-US ETFs that satisfy your requirements.

Sample equity ETF index funds
Like many international investors, people investing from Belgium could consider to approximate the global equity market.

Example funds (using the following selection criteria: total market, all-cap, low costs, fund size is decent, full replication or a high amount of stocks relative to the index when using optimized sampling, accumulating):

The 3 funds selected follow MSCI indexes, this avoids problems with incompatible index definitions.
 * IWDA- iShares Core MSCI World - excludes emerging Market and small caps
 * EIMI - Emerging Market - excluding small cap - EM represent about 10% of the global capitalization.
 * WDSC- world small-cap stocks - excluding emerging markets - according to MSCI definition, small caps are about 15% of the market. Using the Morningstar style box, it seems that 20% would be needed to correctly fill the small cap portion. On March 27, 2018, ishares started WSML (MSCI World Small Cap UCITS ETF) with a TER of 0.35% and apparently a wider diversification over more stocks. This might become the go-to fund.

Based on this, a division 20% WDSC/WSML, 10% EIMI, 70% IWDA is a good approximation.

Sample EURO and European equity ETF index funds
The following funds can be used to focus on Europe:

For equity investing in the Eurozone:

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Sample bond ETF index funds
With the current (2018) bond returns you need to decide how much of your stable assets you invest in bond(funds) and how much you keep in high(ish) yield savings accounts.

Belgian investors have access to many options for bond ETFs through one of the ETF exchanges: government bond funds (government bonds reduce credit risk); corporate, investment grade and high yield bond funds; inflation-linked funds;

Funds can hold bonds that are euro-denominated or bonds in other currencies. Generally bonds in your own Euro currency are advised if bonds are used for protection. This avoids currency volatility which is a big part of short term volatility with bonds.

Funds are available across the duration spectrum. Lower duration means lower interest risk, but typically each risk reduction also reduces the expected return.

Some examples for bond ETFs:
 * Justetf.com search for world bonds accumulating with AUM >100M€
 * Examples for broad market, euro denominated bonds from the Amsterdam stock exchange; courtesy of iShares' product overview:

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