Taxes on peer to peer investments in Europe | Your guide to taxes!

When you search the internet its extremely unclear how peer to peer income will be taxed. Sources that do give you answers are sometimes rather answers for local tax laws and are not applicable in your country.

I always display my income tax This is exactly the reason why in my monthly portfolio blogs I always show my income without the 30% taxes I am paying in Belgium, subtract it in my goals update.

I want to avoid that my readers need to go trough what I went trough and that is why I created the ultimate guide on tax laws for peer to peer!

What kind of taxes apply to you?

The first thing you need to find out is what kind of taxes apply to you. There is not one tax rate but three tax rates that can determine how high you will be taxed.

Resident taxes

Resident taxes are the taxes in your country of origin. Depending of the country you live in these can be taxed high or low. In my experience they are usually higher then the second type of taxes, because its much harder to optimize these taxes. Basically the only way to get rid of them is to move to another country! That is a challenge as most countries have either high taxes or a bad job market.

Taxes in the peer to peer platform’s country

The second type are the taxes you might need to pay in the country where the platform is located. These taxes are actually less likely since most investors platform try to optimize their location to be in a low tax zone. Its not a coincidence so many platforms are located in the Baltic states. The withholding taxes of Latvia and Estonia are 0%, so settling here will give the platforms a big advantage. Although the low regulation in those countries might play some role as well.

Taxes in the borrowers country

The third part that might apply is the taxes in the country of the borrowers. If your contract is not with the platform but directly with the borrower (or loan originator) then you might need to pay interest there. In such a case I would expect that the interest goes directly from the borrowers account to yours, and I think this is not a likely situation.

European map of resident taxes

In case you do consider to move country then hopefully this map will help you decide where to go! Additionally should you want to know more about the tax situation in your country then this should give you some idea.

disclaimer “I am not a tax specialist. I interpreted resident tax information at external sources (noted bellow). Please let me know if something is not accurate.”

Now its not all black and white. In this map I usually took the worst possible case but actually for several countries there are excellent exceptions. For Portugal for example if you move there for another country the first 10 years you pay no taxes in your peer to peer investments. For UK there is some tax benefits you will get when investing in peer to peer. I got the information at PWC who are usually fairly accurate, however I do not exclude I misinterpreted anything. Bellow is a table with more detailed information per country.

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Do platforms withhold taxes?

I looked at over a dozen platforms and I found that almost none of the platforms are actually charging taxes.

In case of platforms located in the Estonia and Latvia this was to be expected since they fall under a 0% tax rate there. But I am a little bit surprised about platforms located in other countries. Inquiring about this usually got me the same reply that they are not withholding taxes and you should look into your resident taxes. Questions about why this was the case did not get me a fulfilling answer to be honest. I am not a tax expert unfortunately but I would want at least the platform to know why I should not pay any taxes in the country they are located. If its because they fall under a zero tax rate somehow then just make sure you can answer that when your investors ask.

[table id=6 /]

How are the platforms helping us out?

If we just have to write down the profit we have at the beginning of the year and write it down at the end of the year for all our platforms it can be very cumbersome. At least for the normal people outthere who do not check their Mintos account daily, and who do not write down the exact profit they made at the end of every month.

Lucky most peer to peer platforms have at the very least a way to get out the information you will require for the Tax Authorities.

Crowdestor

Crowdestor does not have a tax report, but you can get the information from the “Transactions” screen. Here you can enter a date and you can select “interest payment for project” for example as filter. You can then export it to PDF or excel, that should be enough as evidence. One improvement here I can think of is a multiselect list on the transactions type.

Grupeer

Grupeer allows you to download an income statement report from the overview screen. This should be more than enough to do your taxes.

Grupeer is currently generating the top income for me so its really useful they have this income statement.

Mintos

Mintos allows investors to get a Tax report in the account setting. The report is very basic (unless you live in Germany, Estonia or Latvia) and shows just some basic data. But it should be more then enough to report your taxes:

The funny thing is the site mentions that there is a special report for Estonia, Germany,.. but when I requested the report for Estonia it looked 100% identical as the Belgian report, but anyway as I said its more then enough.

If you haven’t tried Mintos yet then make sure to check out my Mintos review to find out if this could be something for you!

Iuvo Group

Iuvo Group has a very good account statement screen where you can get information you can supply to the Tax authorities. You can see the yearly profit and download the information.

NeoFinance

I had to mention NeoFinance here. As its a regulated platform there is a 15% withholding tax they charge. Now you should now that as a foreign investor the first 500 EUR of investing is tax free. After that there is a 10% tax rate.

I have been trying to figure out how to get these taxes back but so far I have not. NeoFinance is actually working actively on the case. They have a very nice website with a lot of information here, but this one crucial part is lacking. After many mails and some very tiresome talks on facebook they did see that this was a gap in their information and NeoFinance is working on improving the information for investors. When they do I will update this section, and even though its only 8 EUR I need to retrieve still I plan to go to the process to make it easier for you guys.

PeerBerry

In the statement screen PeerBerry gives you a good overview of the profit you made last year. But you can’t export the overview only the full transaction list (which is a bit much imo). Perhaps you can take a screenshot and attach it to your taxes. Then again you are usually not obliged to add evidence unless they specifically ask for it. Not in Belgium anyway. Just writing down the interests should be enough.

What about other platforms?

I might add more platforms here later, but I believe by now it should be clear to you how you can retrieve the information. If you find something strange or special about any peer to peer platform (tax related) then let me know and I will add them here!

Where can I find more information about resident taxes?

The absolute best source is still your Tax Authorities. While I’m not familair with Tax Authorities in other countries I do ask many questions to the Belgium Tax Authorities, their answers are just as good as those from an accountant. I have asked them about peer to peer and ETFs. The earlier you ask the right questions, the earlier you can plan for investments where you pay less taxes.

Another source that is very reliable, and that was also the main source of my research is pwc. It holds Tax information for pretty much any country and will have good information, especially if you live in the EU you can count on up to date and accurate information. Check them out here!

In a future blog I want to add some examples about specific countries, but already a dozen hours or more went into this research and that kind of research would be considerably more difficult. Have you already reported taxes in your country? Please let me know with some screenshots or photos if possible, then I can add this here to make it easier for others in the future.

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