Search for:
Author

Alain Huyghe

Browsing
Alain Huyghe heads Baker McKenzie's Tax Practice Group in the Brussels office, and the vice president of the Belgian branch of the International Fiscal Association. Alain has been consistently recognized over the past 15 years as a leading tax lawyer in Belgium in publications such as International Tax Review, Chambers Global, The European Legal 500, and Practical Law Company.

Last year, Belgium introduced DAC 7 “light” reporting obligations for digital platform operators in the sharing and gig economy in anticipation of the implementation of the EU DAC 7. The legal provision that implemented the DAC 7 “light” reporting obligations remained vague however and left open quite some questions in practice with further implementation measures that needed to be taken. The Belgian tax authorities published a FAQ on Monday 14 January 2022. the FAQ clarifies the legislation and provides for the necessary implementation measures in view of the first reporting deadline, which is 31 March 2022.

Following a new bill, the Belgian tax authorities have the right to request taxpayers who keep their books and records digitally to submit them through a secured online platform. This new provision lowers the barrier for the Belgian tax authorities to perform a tax audit and could thus possibly increase the number of tax audits in the future. This would also result in a substantial increase of digital data available to the Belgian tax authorities, which allows datamining in relation to the information submitted and therefore more efficient tax audits.

In anticipation of the EU DAC 7 initiative, Belgium has recently introduced “DAC 7 light” reporting obligations for digital platform operators in the sharing and gig economy. The goal is to render the income realized by service providers through these platforms more transparent and to prevent avoidance or fraud from a tax and social security perspective.

A new and extended version of the Securities Account tax was introduced in Belgium by the Law of 17 February 2021 that entered into force on 26 February 2021. The new tax takes the form of an annual tax of 0.15% on securities accounts that exceed EUR 1 million in average value (this includes financial instruments as well as the cash balance). The tax will first be due for the reference period starting on 26 February 2021 and ending on 30 September 2021.