IPT / EIP: “Individuele Pensioen Toezegging” / “Engagement Individuel de Pension” – Belgium

December 25, 2018 10 By admin

What?

  • A pension saving formula according to belgian law
  • “Individuele Pensioen Toezegging” / “EIP: Engagement Individuel de Pension”
  • Your employer (or your company if you are self-employed) puts money into your personal savings fund instead of paying it directly to you.

Rules of the game

  • The employer can deduct the IPT expenses as expenses from the company
  • You have to pay 4.4 % taxes immediatly
  • You will also pay 10 % taxes when you receive the money at retirement age.
  • Addionally, you pay 3.55 % RIZIV and 2 % solidarity premium the moment you receive the full amount of the savings.
  • There is a limit on the amount which can be contributed each year: the infamous ’80 % rule’.
  • If you missed contributions in previous years, you can add contributions later on. This is called a ‘backservice’. The total amount however is also limited by the same ’80 % rule’.
  • You can choose betwen a ‘TAK21’ (savings account – low interest – guaranteed interest / guaranteed losses) or in a TAK23 account (mutual fund type)
  • You can add a life insurance / income guarantee insurance

All this can be found all over the interwebs so I won’t repeat it here. What you will not find is the answer to:

Is saving in an IPT a wise thing to do or could you better pay the taxes and invest it yourself?

I’m comparing these three cases:

  • Case 1A: I invest this year (age 52) in an IPT and use a TAK21 – interest paying account
  • Case 1B I save in a TAK23 – mutual fund – stock market (‘agressive’) IPT
  • Case 2: I ignore the IPT, pay taxes today, and invest the left-over profits in a simple index fund

The fund offered by you: investment profile

The your bank / insurance provider who eagerly wants to offer you an account to collect more of your savings money will have to investigate your ‘investment profile’. Following that investigation, THEY will tell you what investment is suitable for you. Because YOU are considered too dumb to known that about yourself. For instance, if you are 50, you are supposed to take less risk because your time horizon is shorter, hence you will get a TAK21 money market savings account. Never mind that you receive much less than the inflation and thus actually lose your retirement savings on that account.

The  80 % rule

The limits are determined by something which is called the ’80 % rule’ which is really a grotesque scam. In theory, it means that your contributions should not exceed an amount that would make have you a pension larger than 80 % of your last salary. In reality, even with the maximum ’80 %’ contributions, you will never have a pension even close to 80 % of your working income, and after the statistical average life age (79) you are supposed to drop death or continue in poverty because you won’t receive anything (from this ’80 %’ fund) any more. And remember, you are not allowed to contribute more even if you wanted.

Case 1A: Calculation of saving in an IPT (as a self-employed) “safe” TAK21 interest savings account

AgeContribution or interestsTaxCommissionFund saldo
5236001521033345
53-644923837
656263211

Isn’t that remarkable? I have put 3600 € in my savings fund, and after 13 years of interests I receive less than what I have put in. Now this is not even accounting for the inflation!! In reality I will have lost more than half of my savings (in purchase power).

Case 1B: save in an ‘agressive’ TAK23 (i.e. stock market) IPT fund

We have to take a bet here on the future retuns, but average retuns in the past were often approx 7 % annually.

AgeContributionTaxesCommissionFund Saldo
5236001521033345
53-647533
6512296831

You end up with a lot more; but bear in mind that due to inflation, your real return is half of this.

Case 2: ignore the IPT – pay out the dividend (on the same 3600) and invest in an index fund

AgeContributionFund Saldo
5220062006
655933

The amount to invest here is the net dividend after all taxes, which means:

  • start with 3600
  • deduct 20.4 % company profit taxes
  • deduct 30 % RV (roerende voorheffing – taxes on savings / capital income)

At the end you receive still a lot more than the IPT – case 1 A, but a bit less than IPT – case 1 B. The actual returns of case 1B and 2 of course will depend on performance of the market and the TAK23 fund.

Conclusion

  • An IPT with a TAK21 ‘guaranteed interests’ is a stupid thing which melts away your savings.
  • AN IPT with a TAK23 – agressive is approx as good as paying the taxes and investing in an index fund. Both cases don’t even offer full protection against inflation but hey, you have to pay the taxes anyway.
  • Assuption is the self-employed with his own company. The calculation is different if you are an employee and your employer saves in an IPT for you.

Other Belgian Pension Savings Formulas:

For self-employed: VAPZ

For everyone: “Pensioensparen”/”Epargne Pension”