Succession

Overview

Succession is the transfer of a company to its next owner or its next operator, and the two do not have to move at the same time. In Belgian tech and business it runs through four routes, a family generation, an internal manager, an external buyer, or a hired chief executive above a founder who stays a shareholder, and in Flanders the family route carries a 0% gift tax that the other routes do not.

Succession separates two assets that founders tend to treat as one: the shares, and the job of running the company. In Flanders that tax route is explicit: a gift of a family company is exempt from gift tax, an inheritance is taxed at 3% in the direct line and 7% for other beneficiaries, and both require at least 50% of voting rights in family hands, a real economic activity, and three years of continuity with the seat of real management inside the EEA. Inheritance tax and gift tax are Flemish regional taxes, so those rates describe Flanders and do not describe the rest of Belgium.

Stated facts & numbers

• Entities tied to this concept on the wiki: 33, of which 15 people and 0 companies
• Videos in the Belgian corpus discussing it: 70
• Gift tax on transfer of a family company in Flanders: 0%, residential real estate and building land excluded
• Inheritance tax on a family company in Flanders: 3% in the direct line or between partners, 7% for other beneficiaries
• Shareholding threshold for the Flemish regime: 50% of voting rights, or 30% combined with one or two other shareholders
• Continuity period after the gift or the death: 3 years of uninterrupted activity, no capital reduction, published annual accounts, seat of real management in the EEA
• Sale route infrastructure: Overnamemarkt, run with the expertise of Unizo, more than 700 businesses and commercial premises listed
• Operators on the wiki tied to succession: Peter s'Jongers (Protime), Bart Claes (JBC), Micheline Van de Voorde (Saisons), Jan Verlinden (Ritchie), Pieter Janssens (iO)