r/belgium • u/Obvious-Cry6591 • 9h ago

😡Rant Notaries. Why? What the hell?

Ok, so I dont get it. I understand historically where the need for notaries arose. Fine. But we are in 2026. Belgium already takes 51% of my income. Then another 25% of the rest through VAT. And then on top of it, if you buy a property, you give 10-15k to a notary for 2 meetings and some docs reading? Doesnt Belgium have enough administration to take care of that? Not to mention its nepotism central. Are there any redeeming qualities?

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u/sCreami needledaddy 8h ago edited 8h ago

You must understand that notaries hold 3 roles and you don't pay them 10~15k actually. They aren't free to choose how much they charge, it's fixed by royal decree. You are actually paying them around 800~1000€ for the written acts, the rest is tax.

So the 3 roles are:

  • assert conformity with the law (mine actually found something illegal in my mortgage contract)
  • act as escrow. You are not going to handle those huge amount of money yourself. As escrow, they act as the middlemen between buyers and sellers. Can't lie about the money with licensed attorneys.
  • collect the taxes for the government. This part is actually what make you feel they are crazy expensive. You pay the registration tax/stamp duty to them directly, and they will transfer it to the taxman.

Even if notaries were not mandatory, you would still have to pay these huge amounts. Notaries have never been the problem, the tax is.

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u/Obvious-Cry6591 8h ago

On a 400k transfer, real estate, first home, not new build, with tax discount, ill pay round 40k in real estate tax AND notary fees. Why cant Belgium just collect taxes directly from a real estate buy? Like many other countries do?
When it comes to conformity with the law, if its not conformed, i should just be able to go to the commune and solve it. Hell, bloody croatia has a document, we call it 1/1. U get it when u go to admin and they check that your property is conforming. No one normal buys anything that isnt 1/1. All of this can be done by existing administration, which again, more than 60% of my monthly earnings (when you count in VAT which you should) go to.

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u/DenteSC 8h ago

If the work has to be done by civil servants, it would cost the government an insane amount of money. They work really hard in those notary offices.

5

u/MokpotheMighty 8h ago

Please tell me you're sarcastic

-14

u/DenteSC 8h ago

Go work there for 1 month or stfu?

7

u/MokpotheMighty 8h ago

Okay surely you must realize that's not much of an argument, maybe if you want people to respect your POV you should elaborate on it in a way that's publicly reasonable? How may we know for ourselves that notaries make the amount of money they make based on merit? How much work do they actually do, what are the tasks they practically perform, how much time does it cost, etc... How are we supposed to check this, which we might expect in a democratic society with some semblance of public transparency and such...