A bill providing for the doubling of the tax allowance on first home purchases was approved on Monday evening by a Walloon parliamentary committee.
The regional government had recently announced that the measure would take effect from this summer.
Since 2018, when paying registration fees, first-time buyers have benefited from an allowance amounting to €20,000, a net gain of €2,500. This measure has benefited nearly 25,000 households a year since it was introduced.
Given its direct impact, the Minister for the Budget and Finance, Adrien Dolimont, proposed to the government to increase the allowance from €20,000 to €40,000, up to a purchase price of €350,000.
More expensive property will benefit from a degressive advantage up to a buying price of €500,000, above which the current allowance would remain unchanged.
The various tax provisions attached to the bill include the lifting of the existing discrimination between small-capacity thermal motorbikes and electric motorbikes. The thermal bikes have historically been exempt from road tax while the electric ones, despite being cleaner for the environment, have been fully taxed.
The text was passed almost unanimously, with only the Belgian Workers Party, PTB, abstaining.
