Services de conformité

Last month we communicated that Belgium had taken some VAT-related measures as a direct result of the pandemic.

Belgium has also introduced further VAT reforms – from 1 March 2022 to 1 July 2022, the VAT rate for electricity will be reduced from 21% to 6%.

Specific reporting obligations for digital platform operators have been in place since 2021. These obligations request that digital operators inform service providers active on the applicable platform of their fiscal and social obligations. Digital operators also need to send to both the tax authorities and service providers information relating to the type of service rendered and any relevant amounts.
The Belgian Tax Authorities have recently published FQAs clarifying the scope of these reporting obligations. The first reporting deadline is as soon as 31 March 2022, and it is advisable that any affected digital operators refer to this for clarification of the legislation and their responsibilities.

The Covid-pandemic continues to have a significant effect on the VAT measures countries are undertaking. Circular 2022/C/2 has extended the temporary VAT rate of 6% on the supply, intra-community acquisition and import of mouth masks and hydroalcoholic gels.

We recently published an update relating to Belgium’s intention to mandate B2B e-invoicing- and it looks like this is increasingly gaining more impetus. The Belgian Minister of Finance has reinforced Belgium’s intention to make e-invoicing mandatory in his policy note. This intention is mainly triggered by the need to reduce the VAT gap. Belgium’s VAT gap is high- amounting to 3.6 billion Euros, or 10.4% of the total VAT revenue, and mandatory e-invoicing is seen as a means to overcome this deficit.

This is still at early stages- no timeframes have yet been announced, and there are not yet any suggested working models for a potential e-invoicing mandate. However, it is difficult to ignore the increasing popularity of PEPPOL in Belgium in recent years- and so it seems likely that Belgium will rely on a similar model for its own e-invoicing mandate, drawing on its own experiences with PEPPOL to help build an e-invoicing model.

The full policy note can be found here.

The European Directive 2014/55/EU on e-invoicing for public procurement had already taken effect in law but was not yet implemented in VAT legislation. As a result, the Council of Ministers recently approved a draft Royal Decree on B2G e-invoicing which has now been submitted to the Council of State.

From 1^st January 2022, e-invoices will be the preferred method for submitting invoices to Government organisations. It will still be possible to send invoices by post- but these must be sent to a specific address- SPW Finances – Centre de scanning – Avenue du Gouverneur Bovesse 29 – 5100 Jambes. Sending an invoice in PDF or Word format by email will no longer be permitted.
There will also be several new mandatory references on the invoices.