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 (note that the values are formatted according to US usage and not European usage).
 * 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 100,000 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 1,880 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 capital gains (but it taxes dividends at 25%)
 * Domiciled in Ireland : For the reasons mentioned in This wiki page, which also shows calculations for ETFs domiciled in Ireland is better
 * One of 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).
 * Dutch domiciled funds need to be avoided because XXX
 * French domiciled funds need to be avoided because XXX
 * German domiciled funds need to be avoided because XXX
 * UK domiciled funds need to be avoided because XXX
 * Luxemburg domiciled funds need to be avoided because XXX
 * Belgian domiciled funds need to be avoided because XXX

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) (IMEA): TER 0.33% : alternative Vanguard VEUR : TER 0.12 % for investing in Europe.
 * XXXX: For investing in the Eurozone

Protection/Bonds
Investing for protection can be performed through multiple instruments: saving accounts (government insured or not), term accounts,"staatsleningen", OLO (Obligations Linéaires -Lineaire Obligaties : one of these nice Belgian bilingual abreviations) and of course bond ETF index funds.

Bonds ETF index funds
Belgian investers have access to many options for Bond ETF funds through one of the ETF exchanges; government and corporate; investment grade and high yield; inflation-linked, Euro-denominated or in other currencies, duration limited or not.

Some examples from the Amsterdam stock exchange; courtesy of Ishare product overview:

For broad market, Euro denomination bonds:

For specific maturity Euro denomination bonds:

Note: that investment grade corporate funds are also available: