Under pressure from the OECD, Belgium has extended its patent tax allowance to an innovation tax allowance.
This innovation tax allowance will no longer apply only to income generated by patents, but also to income generated by other intellectual property rights, including supplementary protection certificates, plant variety rights, orphan drugs, copyrighted software and data and/or market exclusivity. In terms of patents, this means pending patents will also be eligible. As a result, businesses will be able to benefit from their tax allowance much sooner than before. The innovation tax allowance will be applied to net income rather than gross income, as was the case previously.
