Design
Principle
The Tax Shelter of the Belgian Federal government is an EU-validated, spend-based mechanism created in 2003 to finance the Belgian creative industries. Unique in its kind, this public-private partnership has matured over the years to the benefit of all Belgian audio-visual industry stakeholders and of European producers alike.
In essence
In essence, the regulated system incentivizes Belgian corporations to allocate part of their taxes to European audiovisual projects that spend part of their production budgets using Belgian human and technical resources. The Belgian State delegates to private intermediaries, such as Beside Tax Shelter, the initiative and the responsibility to collect funds from such “client-investors”.
Achievements
As a result, client-investors inject yearly 180M€ in European works coproduced with Belgian resources. Via the Belgian spend obligations, the Belgian ecosystem (cast, crew, studios, etc) benefits from the inflow of projects and associated expenditures. Since these Belgian expenditures represent taxable income in Belgium, the Belgian State recoups the “tax gift” it granted to the “client-investors ”.
Ranging from critically-acclaimed movies such as France’ Hors Normes to “big budget” series such as Der Schwarm, the Tax Shelter mechanism fuels Europe’s race for content of all genres and budgets. The Tax Shelter virtuous circle has been spinning for nearly 20 years!