Belgian vehicle tax explained..

This post is related to  some of my earlier posts regarding your car purchase in Belgium.

Many of the expats come to a situation of buying a car in Belgium. Whether its new or used, some of you want to know the tax that you've to pay. The following details are for cars (personal use) bought in Flanders (the Dutch speaking region). There is slight difference in the tax amounts if you live in the French speaking region.
Apart from insurance (will explain in separate post) one need to pay two taxes when buying a car.
1. 'Belasting op inverkeerstelling' (BIV)
2.' Verkeersbelasting'

1. BIV is a one time tax when one first register the car and act as an introductory tax related to environmental norms.  This is calculated after considering various factors such as the engine size, engine power output, CO2 emission, ... These details can be found from the car's registration document as below,

[Source: Belastingportaal Vlanderen]

There is an approximate simulation tool available in the tax portal to calculate the BIV tax amount. The simulation can be completed by selecting the type of vehicle you want to check, type of driver and then adding some details of the car.
The picture below shows an example for calculating BIV of a personal use car first registered in 2009, having engine class (fiscale pk) 9 and engine output kW = 91. Click on the image for larger size.

The above tool is not considering the CO2 emission but the actual case includes that, and thus can have slight variations in the BIV amount.

2. 'Verkeersbelasting' is the actual yearly tax one need to pay for vehicles. In Belgium, this is calculated purely on the basis of engine capacity. The following table shows the different tax class/category (fiscale pk) and the corresponding 'verkeersbelasting' to be paid per year (as of December 2013).

 [Source: Belastingportaal Vlanderen]

Note: In Belgium, there is no BIV to paid for for light weight (lichte vracht) commercial vehicles (for example: 2 seated pick-up trucks). Such vehicles have only a flat rate of verkeersbelasing on the basis of their capacity.