Vintro Pro
NL · FR · EN
Vintro Pro
NL · FR · EN
Collectors’ items are named separately in the scheme. For stamps the difficulty is not the rule but the box.
Stamps as collectors' items fall under the margin scheme.
Stamps traded as collectors' items fall under the margin scheme. Belgium's tax authority names collectors' items explicitly.
Belgium’s FPS Finance names collectors’ items alongside second-hand goods, works of art and antiques as a category the scheme applies to. Stamps traded as collectors’ items belong there.
The difficulty is administrative. You buy an album, a box or an estate at one price, and sell hundreds of stamps out of it at prices from a few cents to hundreds of euros.
As long as you trade stamps for what they are — issue, condition, rarity — you trade collectors’ items. That is the category named separately.
Buy from a private individual, from an estate or from a colleague working under the margin, and there is no deductible VAT, so the scheme applies.
Belgium’s FPS Finance defines second-hand goods as “tangible movable property that is suitable for further use as it is or after repair”. Excluded are, among others, new goods, precious metals, precious stones and pearls, renovated goods, goods that are consumed on first use, and goods that cannot be used again in the same state.
That is the whole test, and it is a test about the goods, not about your trade. Alongside second-hand goods, FPS Finance explicitly names works of art, collectors’ items, antiques and second-hand means of transport. The scheme sits in article 58, § 4 of the Belgian VAT Code and is worked out in Royal Decree no. 53 of 23 December 1994. This page describes the Belgian scheme; the four-country panel below shows where the Dutch, French and UK rules diverge.
The example is a stamp collection: bought for €140.00, sold for €520.00. Put your own figures in.
Sold at a loss: there is no margin, so no VAT is due. A negative margin does not give you anything back either.
The VAT is inside the margin, not on top of it. That is the mistake this calculator is built to prevent: 21% on a €400 margin is €84, while you owe €69.42. How to do this across a whole return period — and why France calculates piece by piece by law — is set out in How do you calculate margin VAT?
New stamps bought at the post office to resell are neither second-hand goods nor collectors’ items in this sense. New goods are on the exclusion list.
Stamps damaged beyond any meaning to a collector fall under goods out of use. In practice that is the residue left over from a bulk purchase.
Whether stamps fall under the scheme is answered the same way in all four countries: it is European law. The rate and the calculation method are not.
Margin across the whole return period. Article 58, § 4 VAT Code and RD no. 53.
Globalisation scheme or individual method. Wet OB 1968, article 28b onwards.
Legally piece by piece. Globalisation is an option there, not the default. CGI art. 297 A.
HMRC’s own scheme, outside the EU. Below the registration threshold you pay nothing.
A box at one price yielding hundreds of stamps calls for a register. Royal Decree no. 53 asks for registers, not a split after the fact.
In Belgium you take the margin across the whole return period. With hundreds of small sales that matters.
A margin sale carries no VAT amount, not even at €1.50 a stamp.
New goods are expressly on the exclusion list.
Written on 8 September 2026. The scheme, the definition of second-hand goods and the exclusions were measured on 8 September 2026 at Belgium’s FPS Finance, Regeling van belastingheffing over de marge, which names article 58, § 4 of the VAT Code and Royal Decree no. 53 of 23 December 1994 as its basis. Since 1 January 2026 the law of 19 December 2025 excludes goods bought at a reduced rate from the margin scheme — explained in circular 2026/C/14 of 13 January 2026, measured via eur-lex.europa.eu on 31 August 2026. FPS Finance has not yet updated its own page on that point — re-checked on 10 September 2026.
This is an explanation, not tax advice. Whether the margin scheme is the right choice in your case, and how to enter it in your return, is a question for your accountant.
Yes, as collectors' items. Belgium's FPS Finance explicitly names collectors' items among the categories the margin scheme applies to, alongside second-hand goods, works of art and antiques.
In Belgium you take the margin per return period: all purchases against all sales. A €140 collection that sold for €520 in the same period gives a €380 margin and €65.95 of VAT.
No. New goods are expressly on the exclusion list. Stamps bought new to resell fall outside.
Stamps that mean nothing to a collector any more fall under goods that can no longer be used in the same state — one of the exclusions named by the tax authority. Keep them separate in your register.
The same question, a different kind of piece. The answer differs more often than you would expect.
Every piece gets its own purchase price, selling price and scheme. Vintro Pro keeps margin goods separate from the rest and works out your margin per return period.
Free up to 10 pieces, no card number and no end date.