Doing Business in Belgium

PwC launches the ‘Doing Business in Belgium’ website to guide foreign investors through the Belgian entrepreneurial landscape

Foreign investors see Belgium as an attractive country to make investments. But fiscally and politically, it is also a complex country. That is why PwC decided to launch the new site ‘Doing Business in Belgium’ ( www.doingbusiness.pwc.be ). The goal is to offer free-of-charge information to foreign investors on everything they should know about creating an enterprise in Belgium. Belgian entrepreneurs and students can also use the information included there.

The site brings together the knowledge and best practice of every division in PwC Belgium. And since it is updated whenever Belgian legislation changes, it will always include the latest and most accurate information.

Eddy Dams, a Partner at PwC and the man behind the initiative, says: “What does a foreign investor want to know when he or she is looking for a location for a subsidiary or a centre of excellence in Europe? Mainly about the corporate taxation system, the social legislation and legal certainty. With this initiative, we hope to provide an accurate and in-depth overview. Thanks to this instrument, an investor can find their way through the broad lines of Belgium.”

Complete and simple
The site is built around three pillars: ‘About Belgium’, ‘Practical information’ and ‘Tools’. The first part offers a concise description of Belgium as a country from a wide variety of viewpoints: history, politics, and social, cultural and so on. Yet it goes a great deal further than that. Belgium is positioned as the best of places from which a firm can do business with Europe and the world. What are the fiscal opportunities for a subsidiary in Belgium? What do you need to know when you import from and/or export to somewhere from Belgium? The site provides an overview of the country’s recent measures, such as notional interest deduction and the patent income deduction (PID) with regard to fiscal possibilities. It also informs the visitor about developments such as the Convention with Hong Kong, which makes Belgium the leading European investor gateway.

The site’s Practical information section is self-explanatory. What legislation is in force in Belgium itself? Here the site looks at intellectual property, social legislation, audit requirements, accounting standards, as well as corporate and personal income tax.

In the last section, Tools, PwC provides a series of practical instruments to set up a company in Belgium. Included here in the main are all the contact addresses of every major federation and association to which a foreign investor may turn to find further information on their sector, the bilateral agreements between their country and Belgium, government departments and so on.

There is also a timeline clearly showing the operations required to create a firm, how long this will take (as a minimum), and how much it will cost. Lastly there is a tool that, on the basis of two parameters – capital and shareholders – determines what type of entity an investor can create, with the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Accurate and recent information
For a non-specialist, it is impossible to follow all the regulations in force. Fiscal regulation is continually changing. New laws are being voted and systems are being simplified or made more complex. A website is the only way to ensure this information is always up to date. Every division of PwC Belgium is committed to collaborate and adapt all the information on the site, where necessary, and to indicate in advance which regulation is under discussion.

Some parts of the site are accessible to anyone. For other parts, the visitor must have a login and a password. These are sent free of charge to an e-mail address.