The rate
Belgian withholding tax on dividends — the précompte mobilier / roerende voorheffing — is 30%.
It applies to dividends received by a Belgian resident. On a €1,000 gross dividend, €300 is withheld and €700 arrives, assuming a Belgian intermediary is doing the withholding.
Dividend withholding is a separate regime from the 10% capital gains tax and from the TOB. The three are charged on different things — income received, gains realized, transactions executed — and one has no bearing on the others.
One tax that did not go away
The Reynders tax — 30% on the interest component of funds holding more than 10% debt claims — was widely reported in 2025 as disappearing with the capital gains tax. The enacted law kept it: on the sale of such a fund the interest component is taxed at 30% first, and the 10% capital gains tax applies to the remainder — two charges, each on its own slice, never both on the same euro. It is a tax on fund disposals, not on dividends, so it sits beside — not inside — the withholding this article covers. How the two charges mesh, with a worked example, is set out in the article on the Reynders tax.
Not every broker withholds
This is where the practical work appears.
Belgian intermediaries withhold the 30% and issue a Belgian tax certificate setting out what was received and what was withheld. For a client of a Belgian broker, the withholding is done and documented.
DEGIRO withholds neither the Belgian dividend withholding tax nor issues a Belgian tax certificate. Its clients receive the dividend without the Belgian 30% having been applied, and declare it themselves through the annual tax return. There is no certificate to copy figures from, so the underlying record has to be rebuilt from account statements: per dividend, the date, the instrument, the gross amount, any foreign withholding already deducted, and the currency.
The absence of a Belgian withholding line on a statement is not an absence of tax due. It means the tax has not yet been settled.
The reclaimable first tranche
A first tranche of dividends each year can be reclaimed through the tax return — the withholding is applied at source, and part of it comes back if it is claimed.
The amount of that tranche is the number to check, not to assume. It is frequently quoted as approximately €833, and independent tools working on the same regime do use €833. But the band is indexed, so the figure applying to a given tax year is not necessarily the figure quoted in an article written for an earlier one, and Belfolio's own source rules mark this amount as unverified. The current indexed amount, and the tax-return code it is entered under, are worth confirming with the FPS Finance or your accountant before a return is filed on the strength of them.
With that hedge stated, the mechanism is straightforward. The reclaim is computed as 30% of the dividends falling inside the band: an investor whose gross dividends exceed the band reclaims 30% of the band, and an investor below it reclaims 30% of what they actually received. The reclaim can never exceed what was actually withheld: there is nothing to recover from a dividend on which no Belgian withholding tax was applied in the first place.
Two consequences follow from that last point:
- for a client of a Belgian broker, the tranche is a refund of tax already withheld, obtained through the return;
- for someone whose dividends arrived without Belgian withholding, there is no refund to obtain on those dividends — the return is where the 30% is settled, and the tranche reduces what is owed rather than producing a repayment.
What the return needs
Across all brokers, for the tax year:
- each dividend, with its date, instrument, gross amount and currency;
- the Belgian withholding tax applied, if any, per dividend;
- any foreign withholding tax deducted at source;
- the Belgian tax certificates where a broker issued them.
As with capital gains, no single broker holds the whole picture, and the tranche is annual and per taxpayer rather than per account — so it is the consolidated total, not any one broker's statement, that determines what can be reclaimed.
What the tranche does to a single dividend, the dividend withholding simulator shows; the total across all your accounts is the calculator's job.
Always verify your figures
Belfolio computes and presents these amounts for information only. This is not tax advice. Verify them with the FPS Finance or your accountant before filing.
Published 2 Jul 2026