Recently, there has
been passed a positive judgment by the Brussels Court of Appeal. The verdict is
positive for those who are fond of holding structures. About what was the case
exactly?
Say you have a
company X, then you can still sell the shares of that company tax free to a 2nd
Company Y, a so-called holding. This holding should pay you as a shareholder of
the first company X . The holding company got after all your shares of company
X. Usually, the holding will not pay immediately and you stay with a claim on
this holding.
The holding company
is going to pay you back (of course tax-free) and at her turn this holding gets
the money from the company X by means of management fees, dividends (payments
of already taxed benefits), etc. That's a nice way to put money from company X
tax-free on your private account.
The tax authorities
would of course prefer to raise taxes and has tried a long time to tax the
shareholder who sold his shares to a holding company. A high amount of tax was
put on the added value (so just the value) of the shares. Now says this Court verdict,
that only added value tax can be put on the difference of the net asset value
of the shares and the market value of the shares. So this is a whole different
story ... because the "value" of the shares is a flexible concept.
Another method to avoid tax problems can be to sell the shares to certain
foreign (EU) companies