Alimony on gross salary

Question

How does someone pay alimony on their gross salary if they are employed by someone else? Suppose the partners agree on giving half of the gross monthly salary as alimony. If said person has X gross income per month which is taxed before having it in their bank account, how can they first pay X/2 to their ex-partner and then be taxed on the remaining X/2? Do they have to wait one year to claim the alimony as costs in their tax return or can they tell the tax office right away so that each month they are taxed on X/2? The countries I am concerned are Netherlands and Belgium.

Answer 1

How does someone pay alimony on their gross salary if they are employed by someone else? Suppose the partners agree on giving half of the gross monthly salary as alimony. If said person has X gross income per month which is taxed before having it in their bank account, how can they first pay X/2 to their ex-partner and then be taxed on the remaining X/2? Do they have to wait one year to claim the alimony as costs in their tax return or can they tell the tax office right away so that each month they are taxed on X/2? The countries I am concerned are Netherlands and Belgium.

There are two senses of the word "how".

One is, "how can one possibly do this?"

The answer to that is easy. Pay more than half of your after tax income as alimony and let that have the tax implications that it does under the relevant laws (which might include not only Belgian domestic tax law, and Dutch domestic tax law, but also one more more Belgian-Dutch tax treaties).

The other sense of the word "how" is, "what is a sensible way to go about doing this?"

I'm not familiar enough with Dutch and Belgian withholding taxes do know the mechanics of how this is done. Probably either the family law lawyer who was involved in setting up the arrangement, or an accountant, would be the best place to do for advice on how this is handled in terms of withholding tax obligations at a detailed, bureaucratic level.

It might be true, for example, that someone can pay half of the after-tax income as alimony along with an assignment of the tax credit for half of the tax withheld.

Alternatively, it might be the case that alimony payments withheld from a paycheck, if set up that way with the employer using the proper withholding tax form, impact how much of tax is withheld from the part of the wage payable to the employee.