Belgium | Recent employee tax developments
Published on 4th Feb 2020
In Belgium, the benefit in kind charge for the private use of a company car has decreased for the income year 2020.
The taxable benefit in kind for the private use of a company car by an employee or a director is determined based on a formula which takes into consideration: i) 6/7 of the catalogue price of the car, ii) the depreciation of the car and iii) the CO² emission rate of the car. A reference CO² emission – which is increased or decreased depending of the effective CO² emission of the concerned car – is updated yearly to compute the effective CO² emission rate of the car.
The new reference CO² emission for calculating the taxable benefit in kind was published on 11 December 2019 (Royal Decree of 3 December 2019). For income year 2020, the reference CO² emission will be the following:
- Petrol, liquid petroleum gas or natural gas cars: 111 g CO²/km (instead of 107 g CO²/km for income year 2019)
- Diesel cars: 91 g CO²/km (instead of 88 g CO²/km for income year 2019)
Due to this change of reference CO² emission, the taxable benefit in kind will slightly decrease (for the second year in a row), which will result in a somewhat lower tax charge in income year 2020 compared with income year 2019.
The new reference CO² emission is effective as of 1 January 2020, so this should now be used for computing the January 2020 benefit in kind and processing the January 2020 payrolls.
Finally, the minimum taxable benefit in kind for a company car (that is €1,340 for the income year 2019) has not been published yet for income year 2020 but should be available shortly.
