| Over the weekend: Belgian Parliament votes to remove tax on pension assets |
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| 26/12/2006 | |
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The Belgian Parliament has approved a 1,464 page document of legislation. Among the number of legal novelties, it will remove for the first time a 0.17% tax levied on pension assets starting in the New Year. The move will help facilitate the establishment of industry-wide, second pillar pension schemes and also help pull more corporates into Belgium. "Historically, the country has seen some of its assets move to more favourable tax regimes such as Luxembourg, Ireland and Holland," says Edwin Meymans, Vice President of the Belgian Association of Pension Institutions. "We think they will come back." There are already a number of multinationals domiciled in the country and the new law intends to keep them in place, while Brussels poaches from its neighbours. Belgium's second pillar has €35bn in pension assets (see related story). Nearly €12-13bn is in corporate schemes, according to an official at Belgium's pension supervisory agency. The official expects a surge in pension assets as more companies take advantage of the liberalised regime. He describes the elimination of the asset tax as the most significant component of the new changes in pension legislation discussed last week. "The idea is to attract more companies to set up their pension schemes in Belgium," says the official. In a separate move designed to bolster the tax regime for Belgian and pan-European funds, pension schemes will no longer be subject to a withholding tax on dividends and interest, says Meymans. The change will impact some of the largest existing schemes domiciled in Belgium such as Suez Tractebel with €1.5bn in assets and Amonis, the doctors' pension scheme, with €950 million. The legislation is officially known as the projet de loi portant des dispositions diverses. Separately, last October, Belgium adopted the European directive (2003-41ce) to harmonise cross-border work-based schemes of multi-national companies. In June 2003, the European Parliament adopted the directive on the activities and supervision of institutions for occupational retirement provision (IORP) and asked all EU member states to implement the directive. V.B |
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