Governments would like us taxpayers to believe that there is only one battle, and that would be the fight against tax fraud. There is at least one other battle, but the authorities would rather not tell us about it. It is an internal struggle that...
Studies predicted it, and it is now becoming a reality: the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has become a liquidity crisis. For companies trying to shift up a gear, this is a nightmare. While their invoice payments are delayed if paid at all,...
OVER THE PAST FEW WEEKS, we’ve all been on lockdown. We’ve been working from home and travelling was totally out of the question. In this context, we’ve had to make do with what we had, trying our best. For some jobs, teleworking is not an...
Bjorn Van Hees | Tuerlinckx Tax LawyersBjorn.Vanhees@tuerlinckx.eu The coronavirus crisis is presenting us with unprecedented challenges. International taxation is no exception. In Belgium, a blanket entry and exit ban on non-essential travel has been in effect since 18 March 2020. In addition, teleworking is mandatory for all...
IT MADE THE NEWS the other day: the Belgian government is only an average performer where it comes to digitisation. And we may even consider ourselves fortunate in having Tax-on-web to boost our reputation. This application falls under what can be called the front office...
THE TAX PROCEDURE of direct taxes and VAT dates back to March 1999, which is twenty years ago this month. If this anniversary may have gone unnoticed, the two decades following its introduction have by no means been plain sailing. Right from its conception, there...
FISCALITY INFLUENCES our behaviour. People avoid highly taxed transactions or income, preferring tax exemption and low tax solutions. The government has planned for that. But if the taxpayer is the one taking initiatives to pay as few taxes as possible, this is called tax avoidance...
Withholding taxes reduce the amount of declarations and checks and the general workload of the government. This may explain why withholding tax in Belgium has been in force for more than a century. However, the simplicity of the withholding tax system has fallen prey to the...
YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE A MARTIAN to not know that elections are coming. A characteristic of our constitutional system is that the House of Representatives then designates the articles of the Constitution which may be amended in the following legislature. Nothing has changed with...
Basket in Tax Law You are an entrepreneur. Not that you have something to hide, but you can’t help feel uneasy whenever you are subject to a tax audit. On the other hand, you know all too well that ‘being compliant’ and the corresponding verification of...