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Tax advisor recommendation with double taxation experience?
Hello, I am currently working mostly in The Netherlands (for one company, payrolled there) and living in Brussels due to my Belgian wife. We are being hounded repeatedly by the Belgian tax authorities insisting I need to pay them even more tax and less in The Netherlands (everything we have done is above board to our knowledge based on my work situation). Our current tax advisor seems to have little to no experience or advice regarding double taxation and treaties between The Netherlands and Belgium. Anyone know of a good proactive tax advisor who can help us sort this out once and for all. We are incredibly frustrated as the tax authorities here have in the past sent incorrect calculations and we had to pay our advisor to sort it out even though the tax people made the mistakes!! Thanks for your help. KP
Surely the problem here is your reliance on a "tax advisor" for something that you should be sorting out yourself with the relevant tax inspectors in the two countries. Given the length of the land border and the common language, at can't be unusual for people to live in Belgium and work in the Netherlands, so the rules must be well practised. Get hold of a copy of the relevant double-taxation treaty (it's probably on the internet somewhere, certainly the UK-Belgium one is), so that you know what that says should happen. Even if it isn't clear in your case, and that happens sometimes, then it almost certainly contains an over-riding provision that the tax authorities in the two countries will agree the division of tax between them. Where a treaty exists, as it certainly does for B-NL, you should never have to pay more tax in total than the tax you would have to pay if you were taxed in totality in the country with the higher taxation rate.
Double-taxation treaties are by their nature long and complex, however I found with the UK-B one that it was obvious that well over 90% of the sections didn't concern me and could just be ignored, and I can't imagine that the situation is any different with the NL-B one. (Not in fact, so different from the Belgian tax booklets themselves.)
I don't know about the NL-B treaty but many have been revised recently to make it clear that LOCAL income tax (the so-called "additional centimes") has to be paid in Belgium even if the income has already been subjected to tax in the other country - however, this would still be subject to the usual overriding rule that you don't pay more tax in the two countries together than you would pay on a solus basis in the more heavily taxed of the two. It MAY be this that is creating the Belgian demand for further payments. I strongly suggest that you make an appointment to see your Belgian tax inspector and get him or her to explain the situation to you - this service is free.
You may also be in a situation where your Dutch employer isn't remunerating you in a way that will minimise your Belgian liability.
What you cannot normally do is to opt to be taxed in the country with the lower tax rates as it is the treaty which sets the rules.
If you do still need an adviser I suggest you seek one who is based close to Dutch border and is used to dealing with the affairs of Belgo-Dutch frontaliers.
