US LLC Formation From Belgium: The Cayman Tax Question You Can't Skip

Belgium doesn't appear on Mercury's or Relay's prohibited-countries list, so both are workable choices for the LLC's US banking. EasyBrise's Global Launch package ($295 first year including registered agent, $149/year renewal) handles LLC formation. The EIN application for a founder without a US Social Security Number goes through the IRS's international phone line, fax, or mail process, and EasyBrise's EIN Follow-up ($129) or EIN Priority ($99) services manage that. FinCEN's 2026 final rule permanently exempts US-formed LLCs from federal BOI reporting.

Brussels and Antwerp have a growing base of founders building SaaS products, consulting practices, and e-commerce brands for international clients. A US LLC gives them USD invoicing, direct Stripe access, and a US-facing entity that's simpler to present abroad than a Belgian BV/SRL built for the same purpose. Belgium's tax analysis here has two completely separate tracks, and most founders only find out about the second one after it's already relevant.

The trigger question is whether your US LLC counts as a taxable 'legal structure' under Cayman Tax rules. Belgium doesn't recognize the pass-through classification your LLC may have under US federal tax law — it treats the LLC as an entity with legal personality, evaluated on its own effective tax rate. A single-member LLC that's disregarded for US tax purposes pays no US federal tax at the entity level, which falls well below the 15% threshold Belgium uses to define a low-taxed 'type 2' structure. In practice, this means a typical solo-founder LLC is a strong candidate for Cayman Tax look-through treatment.

If your LLC is caught, its income — not just passive income, but the LLC's income generally — is taxed as though you received it directly, currently, whether or not you've actually taken a distribution. On top of the tax itself, founders caught by Cayman Tax have a mandatory annual reporting obligation: ticking the relevant box on your personal tax return and filing Form 276 CJC to disclose the structure. Missing this reporting step is treated as a separate compliance failure from the tax liability itself.

This isn't settled ground. Belgium's Constitutional Court partially annulled the most recent 'Cayman Tax 2.1' reform in a September 2025 ruling, and the government introduced a new draft reform bill in December 2025, published in January 2026. If you're a Belgium-resident founder with a US LLC, this is exactly the kind of situation where a Belgian tax advisor familiar with current Cayman Tax guidance is worth engaging early — the rules you'd be planning around are actively being rewritten.

The US and Belgium have had a comprehensive income tax treaty in force since December 2007, alongside a separate social security totalization agreement. Belgium uses the euro and imposes no foreign exchange controls, so moving money between a US LLC's bank account and Belgium is straightforward on the currency side — it's the Cayman Tax question, not banking or FX, that needs the real attention here.

Belgium reformed its controlled foreign company regime in 2024, shifting to an entity-approach model under the EU's Anti-Tax Avoidance Directive. Like several other countries in this series, the rule is scoped to a Belgian company as the controlling taxpayer, holding more than 50% of a foreign entity — an individual founder who owns a US LLC personally, without a Belgian company in the ownership chain, sits outside this regime entirely.

Belgium has a second, entirely separate mechanism aimed specifically at individuals: the Cayman Tax (Kaaimantaks), in place since 2015 and reformed since. It applies a look-through approach to Belgian resident individuals who qualify as the 'founder' of a foreign 'legal structure,' taxing the structure's income as though the individual received it directly — and it exists precisely because the corporate CFC rules above don't reach individual ownership.