A draft Program Act has recently been submitted to Belgian Parliament, containing the following tax measures:
- When a former employee has entered into the system of unemployment with company surcharge, takes up a new employment with another employer (or becomes self-employed), he is in principle still entitled to receive the company surcharge. This surcharge (and additional allowances) can give rise to a tax reduction for pensions and replacement income (a reduction which is not impacted by the newly-received earned income). In order to stimulate taxpayers even more to resume ‘work’, the draft Program Act proposes to introduce a ‘tax exemption’ for the company surcharge (and additional allowances) attributed for the period or periods in which work is resumed. Consequently, the existing tax reduction will be abolished for these amounts (but will remain applicable to certain amounts that do not fall under the new tax exemption).
- Yet again, a new permanent tax regularisation system (for undeclared real estate income, movable income, miscellaneous income and earned income and capital) would be introduced for individuals and corporate bodies (not limited to companies). The system will pursue similar goals to the previous tax regulasization system. However, there will be certain fundamental differences, compared to the previous one. For instance, the distinction between ‘ordinary tax fraud’ and ‘serious tax fraud’ (whether organised or not) will be abolished and the same ‘penalty’ would applied to both.
