Pick-ups enjoy a tax advantage in Belgium, which means that more and more Belgians buy pick-ups for private use. The advantage therefore misses its target, according to the Flemish Minister of Finance. The regulations must be overhauled.
At our southern neighbors they have a financial exception for pick-ups that you can in a sense compare with ‘our’ gray license plate. Pick-ups are like delivery vans or. seen light trucks and therefore much less road tax and less purchase tax have to be paid. It Algemeen Dagblad report that there are therefore many people in Belgium who buy a pick-up for private use, but still enjoy the corporate tax benefits.
The Flemish Minister of Finance wants to take action on this. According to him, ‘the situation has gotten out of hand’ and about half of the 30,000 pick-ups in Belgium are not used at all or are barely used commercially. We are looking for a way to ensure that a pick-up will be used commercially before the tax benefit occurs. They want to do this, for example, by attaching a Chamber of Commerce number to the purchase in some way. Cars that have already been purchased will not be taxed afterwards, according to the minister.
In the Netherlands, an exception is already made for such cars for private use. If you buy such a car here for private use, you pay less road tax (gray license plate), but bpm. That’s usually quite a punch, given that nine times out of ten they are hefty slurpers and ejectors. This already ensures that the purchase of such a vehicle is not too attractive as a non-entrepreneur.