Belgium’s VAT overhaul focuses on data quality
KPMG Belgium has published its takeaways from a seminar on the country’s digital value added tax (VAT) reforms, and its message for businesses is that compliance starts with reliable data.
Since 1 January 2026, qualifying domestic business-to-business (B2B) invoices in Belgium have had to be issued as structured e-invoices. Under current draft legislation, the next step comes on 1 January 2028, when businesses will also report selected invoice data to the VAT authorities in near real time.
The reforms anticipate the EU’s VAT in the Digital Age (ViDA) initiative, which from 1 July 2030 brings digital reporting for intra-Community cross-border transactions, replaces European Sales Listings and makes structured e-invoices the default for those transactions.
Structured, near-real-time reporting surfaces errors sooner, and software cannot fix poor master data, wrong VAT codes or weak system rules on the fly. Businesses are urged to map how data moves through their systems, give it clear owners and build checks in from the start, with tax, finance, IT and operations teams testing VAT rules and reporting flows together before go-live. Rejected invoices and mismatches should then be fixed at source. Transaction data is becoming as structured as the reports built on top of it, and quality has to be managed throughout. Next steps include bridging those gaps, with a semantic framework that creates traceability throughout the reporting chain.
Read more here.
