Belgium's tightened VAT fraud offence under article 73 takes effect
This page records one dated change. For the rules in Belgium as they stand today, see the Belgium guide →
- Jurisdiction
- Belgium
- Tax
- VAT
- Change type
- Compliance
- Status
- In force
- Impact
- FYI
- Announced
- 21 June 2024
- Effective
- 1 September 2026
- Authority
- SPF Finances (FPS Finance), Belgium
- Verified
- Fetched from official source · high confidence
No taxpayer action required — this is a criminal-offence provision aimed at fraudulent VAT Code breaches, not a routine compliance change.
No action — monitoring only.
Article 73 of the Belgian VAT Code, as replaced by the Law of 16 May 2024 (Moniteur belge 21 June 2024, Numac 2024005238), applies from 1 September 2026 after its commencement was postponed from 8 April 2026 by article 252 of the Law of 30 March 2026. Fraudulent breaches of the Code carry level-2 imprisonment under the Penal Code, with an optional accessory fine of EUR 2,000 to EUR 4,000,000; fraud is treated as serious where it involves at least two EU Member States and a total loss of at least EUR 10,000,000.
What changed in detail
Article 73 of the Belgian VAT Code, as replaced by the Law of 16 May 2024 (Moniteur belge, 21 June 2024, Numac 2024005238), applies from 1 September 2026, after its commencement was postponed once already — from 8 April 2026 — by article 252 of the Law of 30 March 2026. Fraudulent breaches of the VAT Code now carry level-2 imprisonment under the Penal Code, with an optional accessory fine of EUR 2,000 to EUR 4,000,000. Fraud is treated as serious where it involves at least two EU Member States and a total loss of at least EUR 10,000,000.
This is a monitoring-only, no-action item for taxpayers; it is included here because the provision has already been in force for nearly a month and was not caught and published until this issue.
What it means
The provision’s own commencement was postponed once — from April to September 2026 — before it finally took effect, so anyone tracking this from the 2024 law’s original text would have the wrong date without checking the 2026 postponement. The cross-border and EUR 10,000,000 threshold for “serious” fraud signals this targets organised, multi-country schemes rather than ordinary filing errors.
Proof
le juge peut prononcer une amende de 2.000 euros à 4.000.000 euros comme peine accessoirethe judge may impose a fine of EUR 2,000 to EUR 4,000,000 as an accessory penalty
No source snapshot. The source is the Belgian tax authority's Fisconetplus legal-text database (the official coordinated text of VAT Code article 73), published as structured data rather than a standard web page.