R&D incentives in Belgium

Research and development incentives in Belgium – The magic of thinking big.

A landscape of tax incentives and direct subsidies is available for your company. Companies have more eligible activities than they think at first glance.

Various ‘research and development’ incentives are available in Belgium to encourage companies to continuously invest in innovation. In the event your organization is developing new products, processes, systems, services, materials or improving existing ones, a variety of incentives might be available to you.

When talking about research and development, people automatically refer to white lab coats and state-of-the art research facilities. However, research and development is typically much broader than that. R&D also includes extending overall knowledge or capability in science or technology. Software development, design, engineering, even maintenance and upgrade activities might be eligible.

Today we are witnessing that countries are increasing and enhancing their research and development support resulting in numerous opportunities. Therefore, it becomes imperative as a business decision-maker to gain a good understanding of the different incentives available.

Situated in the heart of Europe, Belgium offers companies and investors an attractive and comprehensive regime for research and development activities and the management of intellectual property:

• The innovation deduction, which provides for a 85% corporate income tax exemption of qualifying intellectual property (IP) income;
• The R&D investment deduction and the equivalent R&D tax credit for qualifying investments in R&D and patents;
• The partial exemption of withholding tax at 80% for employing scientific researchers, engineers or other innovative personnel;
• Incentives to employers for employing highly qualified foreign employees;
• Beneficial tax regime for income received for the transfer of IP rights from employees to their employers;
• Direct subsidies related to R&D and innovative projects.

With a statutory income tax rate of 25% and 20% for the first 100K of taxable income for small and medium sized income, its broad and strong international treaty network and general favorable tax regime features, Belgium is ranked highly for foreign investments in general and R&D in particular.

Read the brochure for a summary of the main features of the R&D and IP incentives: