Working Paper 05-15 - Evaluation of federal tax incentives for private R&D in Belgium: An update

This paper presents the results of a second evaluation of the tax incentives that were introduced – between 2005 and 2008 – by the Belgian federal government to support R&D activities of private companies. Compared with the first assessment, carried out in 2012, this evaluation extends the period considered by two years (2010 and 2011) and provides the results of a first assessment of the tax credit for investment in R&D and the tax deduction of 80% of qualifying gross patent income that were introduced in 2007. The second evaluation also elaborates on the difficulties of estimation procedures to establish the "causal" effect of public support and the importance to account for the strong persistence in firm-level R&D expenditures.