Who / Why

Who is required to pay the equipment levy?

All manufacturers, importers or intracommunity purchasers of reproduction devices, professional or otherwise. That applies for all devices with which protected works can be copied.

Which reproduction devices does this concern?

This concerns photocopy machines, fax machines, scanners, multifunctional devices, office offset printers and duplicators (mimeographs).

Important note: the equipment levy is also applicable for multifunctional devices because they include a copy function. This means that you must also declare them to Reprobel.

According to what law?

The Copyright Act of 30 June 1994 and the Royal Decree of 30 October 1997 determine both the equipment levy on the devices and the operator levy on copies.

In exchange for the legal authorisation to make copies of other people’s work for internal or didactic use, you must pay a remuneration. That is not a tax, but a flat-rate compensation for the hundreds of millions of copies of protected works (such as novels, textbooks and courses, newspapers, magazines, roadmaps, photographs and sheet music) that are made each year in this country. In other countries such as Germany, Spain and Austria, a system of equipment levy has been in place in some cases for decades.

The people who create copies – also known as operator levy payers – have to pay a remuneration proportionate to the number of copies that they make of protected works: this is the operator levy.