Belgium's droit d'auteur tax status provides a mechanism for self-employed developers, writers, or translators to reduce their tax bill through royalty exemptions. But the efforts of the IT sector to also benefit from the favourable tax regime were pushed back by a first ruling, reports L'Echo on Friday.
On 3 October, the FPS Finance's advance tax rulings department (SDA) responded to a request from an IT engineering company specialising in solutions for combating financial fraud.
It considered that five of its staff hold creative functions, producing works to which the droit d'auteur remuneration scheme could be applied. But the SDA rejected the company's interpretation of the tax and referred to parliamentary documents relating to the new, stricter legislation. The droit d'auteur regime was recently reformed to limit who can benefit.
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The company in question argued that its staff should be able to work under the droit d'auteur status as their work concerns computer programs, which are treated in the same way as literary works under Article XI.294 of the Code of Economic Law. However, the company was unable to demonstrate that they met the criteria for original literary or artistic works under Article XI.165 of the same Code.
The new copyright regime cannot therefore be applied here, the ruling service concludes.
