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For all of my investing life in Belgium capital gains were tax-free. You bought, it went up, you sold, you kept the difference. you had TOB or the tax on transactions but unfortunately, that all changed on January 2026. The Federal government confirmed that a new tax will go into effect targeting real capital gains. The new Capital Gains Tax is a 10% tax on realized capital gains above €10,000 per year per person (so a couple has a 20K exemption). It doesn't make investing in Belgium dramatically worse. But it does change the maths on a few things, and if you're building toward financial independence, it's worth understanding properly rather than just worrying about vaguely. Here's what's actually changed and what it means. What the Tax Is Since January 1, 2026, Belgium taxes realized capital gains on financial assets at 10%. Stocks, ETFs, bonds, derivatives, crypto, most investment funds. If you sell something at a profit and the gain exceeds the annual exemption, 10% of everything above that threshold goes to the government. The first €10,000 of gains per year is exempt. And if you don't use the full exemption in a given year, you can carry forward €1,000 per year for up to five years. That means your effective exemption can reach €15,000 in a single year if you've been underusing it in previous years. Handy if you're planning a bigger rebalance. To be clear: this is a tax on realized gains only. As long as you're holding, nothing happens. The clock starts when you sell. The December 31, 2025 Starting Point This is the detail that matters most if you've been invested for a while. For assets bought before 2026, the tax authorities don't use your original purchase price to calculate the gain. They use the value of your holdings on December 31, 2025, the official snapshot date. So if you bought VWCE at €80 per share years ago and it was worth €120 on December 31, 2025, those €40 per share are grandfathered in, completely tax-free. You only owe tax on gains above the snapshot value when you eventually sell. It's actually a generous provision. Long-term investors don't get hit retroactively on years of gains that built up before the tax existed. ETF Investors: What Changes For a standard accumulating world ETF like VWCE, the core logic doesn't change much. Buy and hold, let it compound, don't sell unnecessarily. That was the right strategy before and it's still the right strategy. The tax only applies when you realize a gain, so the less you trade, the less you pay. A few things worth knowing: FIFO applies. When you sell part of a position built up over multiple years, the tax authorities use First-In-First-Out. The shares you bought earliest are considered the ones you're selling first. That matters during decumulation, because the older lots often have larger gains above the snapshot value. Mixed funds with bond exposure. If you hold ETFs or funds with 10% or more in bonds, the existing Reynders tax (30% on the bond portion of the gains) still applies separately. Pure equity ETFs like VWCE don't fall into this bucket. Opt-in vs. opt-out. Your broker can automatically withhold 10% at the moment of sale (opt-in, which is the default at most Belgian brokers), or you can choose opt-out and declare it yourself via your tax return. If you use an international broker like IBKR, you'll likely be dealing with this yourself. What It Means for a FIRE Strategy The accumulation phase doesn't really change. You weren't selling during accumulation anyway. The tax barely touches you there. Where it gets more relevant is rebalancing and decumulation. If your portfolio has drifted (say your equity allocation is too high after a strong run), you now have a reason to be more deliberate about when and how you rebalance. A large sale in a single year could push gains well above €10,000 and generate a real tax bill. Spreading the rebalance over two or three years, or rebalancing through contribution allocation rather than selling, starts to make more sense. During decumulation, the same logic applies. Rather than selling a large chunk at once, aiming to realize around €10,000 in gains per year keeps you inside or near the exemption window. It's not fundamentally different from a sensible withdrawal strategy, but it adds a planning layer that wasn't there before. Here's a rough number to keep in mind: a €200,000 equity portfolio generating 5% real returns produces around €10,000 in gains per year. Right at the exemption threshold. As your portfolio grows, more of your annual gains will land above it. Factor that into your FIRE target. The Good News for Freelancers Pension savings products are fully exempt from the capital gains tax. That includes VAPZ and IPT, the two main tax-efficient pension wrappers for Belgian freelancers operating through a company structure. I covered both in the freelance financial realities post from a contribution angle. The capital gains tax exemption adds another reason to use them: not only do contributions reduce your taxable income, but the growth inside these wrappers also stays outside the new tax entirely. If you're a freelancer and haven't maxed out your VAPZ, the case for doing so just got a bit stronger. If You're Investing as a Couple The €10,000 annual exemption applies per person. For two people investing together, that's €20,000 in gains per year with no tax at all. With the carry-forward maximum applied, you can potentially use €30,000 in combined exemptions in a single year after building up unused capacity in quieter years. If you're planning a bigger rebalance or starting to draw down, think about timing across tax years and make sure both of you are using your exemptions. It's not complicated. It just needs to be on your radar. How I'm Thinking About It In both the portfolio update and the robo investing post, I mentioned the capital gains tax making me more careful about triggering taxable events. That's still the main practical change for me. I'm not restructuring anything. The portfolio is mostly long-term ETF positions and decumulation is still a fair distance away. What I do differently now is just asking one extra question before any sale: is this rebalance necessary right now, or can I get the same result through where I direct new contributions? Is there a reason to spread this over two years instead of one? They're questions I should have been asking anyway. The tax just makes the cost of skipping them more visible. The Bottom Line The 10% capital gains tax applies to realized gains above €10,000 per year, with a carry-forward that can stretch the effective exemption to €15,000. Pre-2026 gains are covered by the December 31, 2025 snapshot rule. Pension wrappers like VAPZ and IPT are exempt. For a buy-and-hold FIRE investor, the accumulation phase is largely untouched. The planning work shows up during rebalancing and decumulation. What we feared for years finally happened. One of the last tax-free bastions is gone. We shouldn't panic sell or do anything drastic, but it is a reason to keep a close eye on future elections and what politicians have in mind next for the tax burden on investors. Because once a tax is introduced, it's very easy to increase it. Just look at the millionairsbijdrage: it just got doubled from 0.15% to 0.30%. Either way, it's not a reason to panic. But it is a reason to sell a bit more deliberately. Are you adjusting anything because of the new tax, or are you in the camp of just paying the 10% when it comes? Drop it in the comments.

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Belgium’s Capital Gains Tax Is Here. Here’s What It Actually Means for Your Portfolio.

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