Investment property taxes in Belgium: what you pay in 2026

If you buy a home to rent it out in Belgium, you will deal with tax at several moments: when you buy, every year while you own and let the property, if you sell it, and later on a gift or inheritance. This guide sets out the rules as they apply in 2026, region by region where that matters. Those moments carry different taxes, and they are not all levied by the same authority.

The figures come from the Federal Public Service Finance, the Flemish Tax Administration, the Walloon and Brussels authorities and the Belgian notaries, checked in September 2026. Tax rules change regularly. Have your own situation checked by your notary or a tax adviser before you buy.

1. Registration duty when you buy

The reduced rates for your own home only apply to a home you will live in yourself. If you buy a property to let, you pay the standard rate of the region where the property is located.

On a property of €300,000, that means €36,000 in registration duty in Flanders and €37,500 in Wallonia or Brussels, on top of the notary's fees. The conditions of the reduced rates are explained in our guide to registration duties in Belgium.

If you buy a newly built home from a developer, you pay 21% VAT on the building instead of registration duty. A home counts as new until 31 December of the second year after it was first used. The land only falls under VAT if it is sold together with the building and by the same seller. Otherwise registration duty is due on the land.

Since 1 July 2025 there is a permanent reduced VAT rate of 6% for homes sold after demolition and rebuilding. A buyer who lets the home can also qualify, provided they let it for at least 15 years. For private letting, the tenant must be a private individual who registers their address there straight away, and the living area may not exceed 175 m². For social letting, that size limit does not apply.

2. Tax on rental income

No tax is withheld at source on the rent you receive. You declare the income from your property in your annual personal income tax return, where it is added to your other income. How much is taxable depends on who the tenant is and how they use the property.

Letting to a private tenant who lives there

If you let to someone who uses the property as their home and not for their work, you are not taxed on the rent you receive. The taxable amount is the indexed cadastral income (KI), increased by 40%. The indexation coefficient is 2.3000 for income year 2026 (tax year 2027) and 2.2446 for income year 2025.

An example: with a non-indexed cadastral income of €1,000, the taxable amount for income year 2026 is €1,000 x 2.3 x 1.4 = €3,220. The level of the rent and your actual costs play no part in that calculation. If your top euro of income falls in the 45% bracket, that costs roughly €1,449 in federal tax, before the municipal surcharge.

Letting to a tenant who uses the property for work

If the tenant uses the property for their profession, or you let to a company, you are taxed on the higher of two amounts. The first is the gross rent minus a flat cost deduction of 40%. That deduction is capped at 2/3 of the non-indexed cadastral income multiplied by a revaluation coefficient (5.75 for income year 2026). The second is the indexed cadastral income increased by 40%. Letting to a social housing company or non-profit that sublets the property as a home to private individuals follows the cadastral income rule instead.

Furnished letting

If you let the property furnished, you declare the rent for the furniture as movable income on top of the cadastral income, taxed at 30%. Unless the lease says otherwise, 40% of the total rent counts as rent for the furniture. You can deduct flat costs of 50% or your actual costs, but not interest.

Personal income tax rates

The tax-free allowance is €11,180 for income year 2026. Your municipality adds a surcharge, calculated as a percentage of your personal income tax.

Mortgage interest is no longer deductible

Up to tax year 2025, you could deduct the interest on a loan for a home that was not your own home from your property income. The law of 18 December 2025 abolished this federal interest deduction from tax year 2026 (income year 2025). Interest on the loan for a rental property therefore no longer lowers your income tax. For loans taken out by the end of 2023, capital repayments can still qualify, within limits, for the federal reduction for long-term savings. For mortgage loans taken out from 1 January 2025 there is no tax benefit at all, except for certain refinancing loans.

3. Annual property tax (onroerende voorheffing / précompte immobilier)

The annual property tax is a regional tax on the indexed cadastral income. Whoever owns the property on 1 January pays it for the whole year. The amount depends on the cadastral income and on the surcharges set by the province and municipality, not on the price you paid.

• Flanders: base rate of 3.97% of the indexed cadastral income, plus provincial and municipal surcharges.
• Wallonia: base rate of 1.25%, plus provincial and municipal surcharges.
• Brussels: base rate of 1.25%, plus surcharges of the agglomeration and the municipality.

In all three regions a rented home qualifies for the same reductions, for example for dependent children or a disability, but based on the tenant's household. The landlord must then pass that benefit on to the tenant. Benefits tied to living in your own home, such as the Brussels BE HOME premium or the reduction for a modest home in Wallonia and Brussels, do not apply to a landlord. In Flanders the landlord pays the property tax, and the lease can only deviate from that in the tenant's favour.

4. There is no wealth tax on property

You sometimes read that a rental property is subject to an annual wealth tax of 0.15% of its value. That is not correct. There is no annual tax on the value of your real estate; the recurring tax on a home is the annual property tax. The tax it gets confused with is the annual tax on securities accounts. It only applies to securities accounts with an average value above €1,000,000, and the rate is 0.30% for reference periods ending from 1 June 2026 (0.15% before that). The 10% tax on gains from financial assets such as shares, which applies from 1 January 2026, does not apply to real estate either.

5. Capital gains when you sell

If you sell a built property as a private individual within 5 years of buying it, the gain is taxed at 16.5%. After 5 years the gain is not taxed, as long as it falls within the normal management of your private assets. Your own home is exempt if it was your own home without a break for the 12 months before the sale, which does not help with a rented property.

For building land the periods are longer: 33% if you sell within 5 years and 16.5% if you sell between 5 and 8 years after buying. Someone who regularly buys and resells property falls outside this regime, and the profit can then be taxed as miscellaneous income or even as business income. If you received the property as a gift, the gain is taxable if you sell within 3 years of the gift and within 5 years of the donor's purchase. More on the costs of selling in our article on capital gains tax.

6. Inheritance tax and gift tax

Which region applies depends on where the deceased or the donor had their tax residence for the longest time in the last 5 years, not on where the property is located. The favourable rules for the family home, such as the exemption for the surviving partner, only apply to the home that was the deceased's main residence. A rental property or second home does not qualify and is taxed at the ordinary rates.

Who counts as a partner differs by region. In Flanders, unmarried partners who lived together for at least a year also get these rates; in Brussels and Wallonia it covers spouses and legal cohabitants. Flanders has announced a cut in inheritance tax, but according to the Flemish Tax Administration it has not been decided yet.

If you give a home to your children or your partner, all three regions use the same rates for real estate: 3% up to €150,000, 9% up to €250,000, 18% up to €450,000 and 27% above. More detail per region in our article on inheriting a property.

What this means if you sell a rental property

If you sell a home you have been letting, the 5-year period matters most for capital gains. If you first want to know what the property is worth today, you can ask for a free valuation. If you are looking for an estate agent, you can compare up to 3 local agents who know your area.