Which Belgian taxes each broker handles for you — a side-by-side comparison

Reading this comparison

Two investors can hold exactly the same ETF at two different brokers and end the year with different amounts of paperwork. The difference is not the tax — the Belgian rules are the same for both — but who applies it for you and what is left for you to declare.

This page lays out, tax by tax, where each broker stops. It is a description of how these brokers operate, not a ranking or a recommendation: the "best" broker depends on which taxes you would rather not touch yourself, and that is a personal call. Figures and behaviours change; treat this as a starting point and confirm the current position with each broker.

The three taxes that behave differently by broker

An investor in Belgium meets three recurring taxes:

• TOB — the tax on stock exchange transactions, due on every buy and sell.
• Withholding on dividends — 30% Belgian roerende voorheffing / précompte mobilier on distributions, on top of any foreign withholding.
• The 10% tax on realised capital gains, in force since 2026.

Whether each of these is settled for you or left to you is exactly what varies between brokers.

The comparison at a glance

The maintained comparison lives on its own page: the broker tax comparison covers fourteen brokers, generated from the same configuration the calculator computes from, with the source behind every cell and an explicit "not settled" wherever we have not established the answer. It is the one version we keep current, which is why this guide points at it rather than repeating a snapshot here that would drift.

What that page will not let you conclude is that brokers sort into two clean camps. The tempting shortcut — a Belgian broker withholds everything, a foreign broker withholds nothing — does not survive the detail. Lynx Belgium is the counter-example: it is a Belgian-established intermediary and withholds the TOB like the others, but it runs the opt-out system for the capital-gains tax, so that 10% is not taken at source and stays with you to declare. Where a broker is established tells you where to start looking, not what it settles for you: the three taxes come apart broker by broker, which is why the comparison page answers them cell by cell rather than by camp.

What "you self-declare" actually means

Where the comparison says you self-declare, the tax is still owed — the broker simply is not the one paying it over. In practice that means:

• TOB — filed through the monthly TOB return on MyMinfin, using your trade confirmations as the source.
• Dividends — the untaxed foreign dividends go into the annual return, where the 30% is settled and any foreign-withholding credit is claimed.
• Capital gains — the realised gain, measured against your cost basis (or the 31 December 2025 step-up value where it applies), goes into the annual return.

A broker that withholds saves you those steps; a broker that does not withhold leaves the amount — and the responsibility — with you.

Why the certificate column matters

A Belgian tax certificate summarises what a broker withheld and reported on your behalf, and it is what makes a domestic broker's paperwork short. A foreign broker issues an activity statement instead, which lists your transactions but does not map them onto Belgian tax lines. Neither is wrong; they simply hand you a different amount of work.

Belfolio reads the statement a foreign broker gives you and reconstructs the Belgian tax lines from it, so the absence of a certificate does not have to mean hours of manual sorting.

Using this to choose

The honest way to read the comparison is by asking which column you care about. If you would rather never touch a TOB return, a broker that withholds it removes that task entirely. If you already file an annual return and are comfortable adding a few lines, a foreign broker's lower headline costs may matter more to you. This is a description of the trade-off, not advice on which side of it to land — your own tolerance for admin decides that. Always verify the current figures and withholding behaviour directly with the broker before acting.