For international professionals and their families in Belgium
The year you arrive is the year Belgian tax goes wrong most often: the wrong type of return, a personal allowance nobody claimed, a family back home that was never declared, foreign income taxed twice. We check it — free of charge and without obligation.
We work every day with expats from India — and just as much with professionals from the rest of Asia, from Central and Eastern Europe, from Africa and from the Americas. Whatever passport you hold, the Belgian rules on the year of arrival are the same, and so is our check.
In Belgium, the year you move is a split year. From the day you establish your home and your household here, you are normally a Belgian resident — which means the ordinary personal income tax return (IPP / PB), covering the income of that part of the year. It is the far most common situation for someone arriving with a job and a family, and it is precisely the one that gets mishandled: the return is filed for the wrong period, under the wrong status, or without the allowances that go with it. Payroll providers and generic filing services get this wrong all the time — and it is never in your favour.
In most arrivals you become a Belgian resident the day you settle here with your household and register with your commune — so the return to file is the ordinary resident return (IPP / PB). Filing a non-resident return by default, because that is what was done the previous year or because the payroll file says so, is the classic mistake.
You arrived in July, so you were taxed on six months of salary — but the personal tax-free allowance and the family-related benefits are not cut in half for that. Where they were forgotten, or where the return was filed under the wrong status and lost them, the overpayment is immediate and usually substantial.
A spouse with little or no income, dependent children, dependent parents living with you: the conditions are strict, but the amounts are significant — and they are routinely left out of returns filed for newly arrived expats.
The date the commune finally entered you in the register is often weeks after the day you actually moved in — and it is the real establishment of your home and household that counts, not the administrative stamp. A few weeks' difference moves income from one regime to the other and changes the tax due.
Salary earned before you left, rent, interest, provident or pension funds. Belgium has double tax treaties with some 100 countries — India, Poland, Romania, Morocco, Brazil, the Philippines and many more — and the treaty, not payroll, decides what Belgium may actually tax. Income wrongly reported as Belgian is the most expensive mistake we see.
Foreign bank accounts (also to the National Bank's Central Contact Point), foreign life insurance policies, property abroad, legal constructions. Even when no extra tax is due, failing to report is a penalty risk in itself.
Childcare costs, pension savings, service vouchers, mortgage interest, gifts, maintenance payments to relatives. Nothing is granted automatically — it has to be entered in the right code.
As a resident you pay the surcharge of the commune where you lived on 1 January of the assessment year — and rates differ noticeably from one commune to the next. A wrong address, or a return filed under the wrong status, quietly changes your final bill.
General information about Belgian personal income tax, not individual advice. Your own position depends on your facts — that is exactly what the free review establishes.
In most cases, yes. Two routes exist, and they have very different deadlines.
réclamation / bezwaarschrift
Must reach the tax office within 1 year counted from the third working day after your assessment notice was sent. This is the strongest route — and the one people miss because the notice arrives in French or Dutch.
dégrèvement d'office / ambtshalve ontheffing
Available up to 5 years from 1 January of the year in which the tax was assessed, for material errors, double taxation and newly produced facts. Narrower in scope, but it saves files where the objection deadline has expired.
A return that was never filed, or filed late, can usually still be regularised as well. Send us the assessment notice: the very first thing we do is tell you which route is still open and how many days you have left.
Send what you have. A missing document is not a problem — we will ask for it.
Copies of the returns filed for income years 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 — whichever exist. The Tax-on-web PDF is perfect.
The aanslagbiljet / avertissement-extrait de rôle you received afterwards. This is what starts the objection clock.
The day you actually entered Belgium — not the month, the day. Everything in a split year hangs on this date.
A clear copy of your passport (identity page) or of your Belgian e-ID / residence card, both sides. We are legally required to verify your identity before acting for you — see below.
A certificate of residence or a family composition certificate from your commune (both can be downloaded from your commune's e-counter or from MyMinfin/IRISbox), or your residence card showing your address.
A photo of the passport page carrying your Schengen entry stamp (Brussels Airport or another entry point), plus your visa or single permit.
If you were posted to Belgium. The LIMOSA gives the official start date of your activity here.
Your local contract or assignment letter, and — if it exists — the application for the special expat regime.
The annual statement from your Belgian employer for each year concerned (or 281.20 / 281.50).
Annex 15, residence card or a family composition certificate showing who lived with you and from when.
Your foreign tax return or salary certificate for the year of arrival (Form 16 / ITR for India, and the equivalent elsewhere), rent, interest or provident-fund statements.
None of this is red tape we invented. A tax adviser registered with the ITAA is a legally obliged entity, and the file has to be in order before the first hour of work — not afterwards.
Under the Belgian anti-money-laundering law of 18 September 2017, we must identify every client and verify that identity against an independent document before entering into a business relationship. That is why we ask for your passport or e-ID and a proof of residence — and why we cannot simply take your word for your address.
ITAA rules require a written engagement letter with every client before the work starts, stating exactly what we do and what it costs. Yours will price the review at zero and set out the success fee that would apply if you later ask us to correct anything. You sign it electronically.
A mandate allowing us to consult MyMinfin / Tax-on-web for you, to obtain your assessment notices, and to correspond with the tax administration in your name. Without it the tax office will not speak to us about your file — and much of what we need is only visible from inside your own account.
A short form: your identity and profession, the purpose of the engagement, the origin of the funds concerned, and a declaration on politically exposed persons. Our firm has a designated AMLCO — the compliance officer the law requires. The file stays with us, it is not sent to the tax office, and we must keep it for ten years.
The check is addressed to natural persons acting as consumers — private individuals outside any professional or business activity. As a consumer you receive our general terms and a written engagement letter fixing the fee before anything starts, and nothing can be invoiced to you that you have not signed for. Companies, self-employed activities and other professional files are handled separately, under an ordinary fee quotation.
The law distinguishes a business relationship, meant to last, from an occasional client. For an occasional client, identification only becomes legally compulsory once one transaction — or several linked transactions — reaches € 10 000 (art. 21 of the law of 18 September 2017). The ITAA nevertheless recommends its members to identify every client, occasional ones included, together with their beneficial owners, and to check whether they are politically exposed persons. That is the line we follow: your file is identified from the start, whatever the amount at stake. We are also paid by bank transfer only — never in cash.
In practice: you upload your documents, we send you the three items above by email, you sign them electronically, and we start. It usually takes one evening. Uploading your documents commits you to nothing — the engagement letter does, and its price for the review is zero.
Five steps. You are free to stop after step four.
Your tax documents, your identity document and your proof of residence, through the encrypted form below. Files go straight to storage in the European Union — never through WhatsApp or a public mailbox.
We email you the engagement letter (review priced at zero), the power of attorney for MyMinfin and the AML identification form. Electronic signature, no printing, no appointment.
An ITAA-registered tax adviser reads your file within 10 working days. No cost, no obligation, professional secrecy applies from the first document.
In plain English: what was filed, what should have been filed, the estimated difference, and which correction route is still open.
Objection or relief request drafted and filed on your behalf, follow-up with the tax office included, under the success-fee terms already set out in your engagement letter.
Free
Reading your returns, checking your residence status and the split year, and telling you in writing whether there is an error. No engagement, no card, no fine print.
15 % success fee
15 % of the tax actually recovered, with a minimum fee of € 100 + VAT, agreed in writing in the engagement letter before any correction is filed.
No tax recovered → no fee. Where the amount recovered is small, the minimum fee applies — so we will always tell you before filing whether the correction is actually worth it for you. The percentage, the minimum and the scope are already fixed in the engagement letter you sign at the start, as required by our ITAA professional rules: no second negotiation, no surprise invoice.
If your file turns out to need something else than a correction — a first filing, a regularisation, ongoing tax returns — we will quote a fixed fee before starting. You will never receive an invoice you did not agree to.
Encrypted transfer (HTTPS), storage in the EU, access limited to your adviser.
Perfectly reasonable. Uploading scans of your passport and your tax file to a website you have never used is a decision, not a formality. Come and see us instead — at our Brussels office, by video call or simply by telephone — and bring your documents with you. Meeting you in person is also the cleanest way to complete the identity verification the law requires of us.
Our live agenda — choose a free slot and it is booked immediately, with the invitation in your mailbox.
Open our calendar →Tell us when suits you and in which language, and we will call you back to fix the appointment. Use the form below.
Office: Rue de Lombardie 14, 1060 Brussels (Saint-Gilles)
Phone:
02 539 07 89
· 0475 98 54 06
We would rather be clear now than disappoint you later. Please read this before uploading.
Our analysis is worth exactly what your file contains. A missing assessment notice, an income source you did not mention, a family situation described approximately, a document in a language we were not given a translation of — any of these can reverse a conclusion. We cannot verify what we have not seen, and we do not have access to your tax file until you sign the power of attorney.
The free review is a professional opinion on the documents produced, at the date it is issued. It is not a guarantee that any tax will be recovered, nor a warranty as to the outcome of an objection or a relief request. The decision belongs to the Belgian tax administration, and a well-founded claim can still be rejected or reduced. Some files turn out to be correct — or to work against the taxpayer.
Any amount we mention at the diagnosis stage is an order of magnitude, calculated on the documents in hand and on our reading of the rules. It is not a promise of a refund and the final figure may differ, upwards or downwards.
Belgian tax law, thresholds, treaty provisions, administrative circulars and case law change regularly, and can change with effect on a past income year. An analysis is valid at the date it is delivered; we are not obliged to revisit a closed file if the law changes afterwards.
The objection and automatic-relief periods run from the date of your own assessment notice. Nothing on this page extends them. If a deadline has already expired when you contact us, we will tell you — but we cannot be held responsible for it.
The scope of the free check, the 10-working-day turnaround, the success-fee percentage and everything else described on this page may be modified, suspended or withdrawn at any time, and may be adapted to a particular file. Only the engagement letter you sign is binding: in case of any difference, it prevails over this page.
It describes situations we meet frequently. It is not individual tax advice and does not create an adviser-client relationship — that relationship begins with the signed engagement letter. Our liability is governed by that letter and by our general terms of business, within the framework of the professional indemnity insurance required of ITAA members.
We may decline a file without having to justify it — in particular where the anti-money-laundering identification cannot be completed, where the documents appear inconsistent, or where the case falls outside our field. In that event nothing is charged and your documents are deleted on request.
Conditions last updated on 2026-08-05. The version in force is the one displayed on this page at the moment you upload your documents — the version number is shown at the bottom of the page.
CONSULTIA-TAXALIA SRL is a Belgian accounting and tax practice registered with the ITAA (Institute for Tax Advisors and Accountants). Adviser in charge: Zoltán MIKLÓS — ITAA 10896433. We work daily with international employees and their families — split years, double tax treaties, foreign income and reporting obligations are our everyday practice, not an exception.
Our largest group of expat clients comes from India, so the questions that come with an Indian assignment — LIMOSA postings, family left behind, Form 16 and Indian rental income, the Belgium–India treaty — are familiar territory. But our files also come from Romania, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Portugal, Morocco, Turkey, the Philippines, the United States and elsewhere. No nationality is out of scope.
Beyond this free check, we handle full Belgian personal income tax returns for expats, annual compliance, correspondence with the tax office, and the reporting of foreign accounts and property.
Free, without obligation, and covered by professional secrecy from the first document.
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