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On July 1, 2021, in an historic agreement, 130 countries approved a statement providing a framework for reform of the international tax rules. These countries are members of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on BEPS (“IF”), comprising 139 countries. The statement sets forth the key terms for an agreement of a two-pillar approach to reforms and calls for a comprehensive agreement by the October 2021 G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors meeting, with changes coming into effect in 2023. Pillar One of the agreement is a significant departure from the standard international tax rules of the last 100 years, which largely require a physical presence in a country before that country has a right to tax. Pillar Two secures an unprecedented agreement on a global minimum level of taxation which has the effect of stipulating a floor for tax competition amongst jurisdictions. 

The Belgian Parliament adopted the law which contains several amendments to the Value Added Tax Act on 28 June 2021. The provisions of the adopted law are in line with those of the proposed draft, as we reported earlier in our news item here. The law is published in the Belgian Official Gazette on 30 June 2021 and will be generally effective as from 10 July 2021. Specific rules ...

A draft law concerning temporary support measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic is submitted to the Belgian Parliament (see here). The draft law proposes to extend currently applicable COVID-19 tax measures, including VAT measures. The proposed extensions of the VAT measures are as follows: Reduced VAT rate for mouth masks and hydroalcoholic gels: The reduced VAT rate of 6 pe ...

Belgian tax authorities recently published Circular Letter 2021/C/56 (dd. 10 June 2021) – hereafter ‘2021 Circular’. It addresses various important tax issues arising where Belgian private individual investors hold participations in investment funds (‘funds of funds’) that themselves invest in other funds (‘target funds’). The guidance provides confirmation of a number of widely applied market practices, but it contains also genuine refinements and tolerances. Among the prominent elements of the 2021 Circular figures the position that liquidities in a target fund may be left out of consideration for the fund of funds’ asset test if the target fund exclusively invests in other assets than debt-claims. It seems advisable for investment funds to review their Belgian fund tax reporting for correspondence with the positions in the 2021 Circular.

The Belgian Tax Authorities published the VAT Royal Decree which partially transposes the relevant EU Directives on E-Commerce and contains also amendments to the requirements for VAT registration via fiscal representatives. The earlier released draft Decree (see our news item) received a positive advice from the Council of State and the final text will be published in the Belg ...

The federal government wants to adapt the corporate tax rules regarding the deduction of foreign losses. The changes are part of a draft law that the government has recently submitted to Parliament and that contains a series of tax measures, mostly repair legislation.

Extended VAT filing deadlines The Belgian Tax Authorities announced the extension of VAT filing deadlines for the summer period of 2021 (see announcement in NL / FR / DE ). Accordingly, the following new deadlines apply: For filing the VAT return and the European Sales Listing of June/Q2 2021, the deadlines are extended to 10 August 2021. The initial deadlines were 20 July ...

La loi du 21 mars 2021 modifiant le livre XX du Code de droit économique et le Code des impôts sur les revenus 1992[1] (ci-après « loi du 21 mars 2021 ») introduit un certain nombre de réformes (temporaires) du droit de l’insolvabilité.

La raison d’être de cette loi est de faciliter l’accès à la procédure de réorganisation judiciaire pour les entreprises qui se trouvent en difficulté en raison de la crise actuelle du COVID-19. En effet, le « moratoire sur les faillites », qui offrait une protection à ces entreprises, a expiré le 31 janvier 2021. Afin d’éviter une avalanche de faillites dans les mois à venir, le législateur a introduit des mesures temporaires, dont les plus importantes sont brièvement exposées ci-dessous.

Les autorités fiscales belges ont récemment publié un projet d’Arrêté royal qui contient des mesures visant à mettre en œuvre les nouvelles règles de TVA applicables aux ventes transfrontalières en ligne dans un contexte B2C, ainsi que des modifications au système d’identification à la TVA par le biais d’un représentant fiscal (voir section 1. ci-dessous).

Par ailleurs, les autorités fiscales belges espèrent être en mesure de confirmer les exigences en matière d’enregistrement à la TVA pour les entreprises britanniques (voir section 2. ci-dessous).

On June 5, 2021, a Communique was released following meetings of the finance ministers and central bank governors of the G7 countries and reflects that as part of a “renewed and urgent effort towards deeper multilateral economic cooperation,” agreement was reached to support efforts through the G20/OECD Inclusive Framework to address the tax challenges arising from globalization and the digitalization of the economy and to adopt a global minimum tax.