Belgium mandates dual near-real-time VAT e-reporting from 2028
Belgium's cabinet approved a draft law on 18 July 2026 requiring both suppliers and customers to report invoice data to tax authorities in near real-time from 1 January 2028, building on the e-invoicing mandate already in force.
Belgium’s federal cabinet approved a pre-draft law on 18 July 2026 that will require mandatory near-real-time electronic reporting of invoice data from both suppliers and customers starting 1 January 2028. The dual-sided system aims to boost compliance and speed fraud detection. The annual customer listing requirement will be abolished for affected taxpayers.
Belgium’s cabinet approved a pre-draft law on 18 July 2026 that will introduce mandatory near-real-time VAT e-reporting from 1 January 2028. Finance Minister Jan Jambon proposed the amendment to the VAT Code, which the federal cabinet approved via electronic procedure under Prime Minister Bart De Wever.
The draft converts a policy commitment from the 2025-2029 coalition agreement into formal legislative text. Until this decision, e-reporting existed only as stated intention.
How the system works
The new obligation builds directly on Belgium’s e-invoicing mandate, which has required structured electronic invoices for domestic B2B transactions since 1 January 2026.
The draft requires certain mandatory invoice data to be reported to the tax administration in near real-time by both parties:
- The supplier or service provider
- The customer (medecontractant)
This dual-sided, or “bilatéral”, design is intended to improve taxpayer compliance through digitised data flows and give the administration faster, more detailed information for risk analysis and fraud detection.
What businesses gain
The reform delivers one clear simplification: abolition of the annual customer listing (jaarlijkse klantenlisting) for taxpayers subject to the new e-reporting obligation. This removes a recurring annual compliance task.
The design also aligns Belgium with the EU’s ViDA Digital Reporting Requirements, due by July 2030. Investment made now in e-invoicing infrastructure may be partly reusable for the EU-wide standard if Belgium does not add country-specific extensions beyond the EN 16931 minimum dataset.
What businesses must prepare for
The business community has raised concerns about the dual-reporting model. The most significant change is that every business becomes a reporter as a customer, not just as a supplier. Customers must retransmit invoice data the supplier has already reported.
Other challenges include:
- A five-day reporting deadline that may clash with normal invoice cycles and dispute resolution
- Systematic misalignment between e-reported data and periodical VAT returns, creating reconciliation queries
- Higher IT and integration costs, especially for large business customers validating supplier data within tight windows
- Triple reporting on cross-border transactions under Article 194, where the same data could be reported by the supplier, the customer in Belgium, and via the EC Sales Listing
- Loss of EU harmonisation, since ViDA makes customer-side reporting optional, not mandatory
The business community is pressing for supplier-only reporting while the draft is still under review.
Next steps
The pre-draft has been sent for advice to the Data Protection Authority (Gegevensbeschermingsautoriteit) and the Council of State (Raad van State). Only after these advisory steps will the text proceed through the legislative pipeline.
Professional bodies expect the law to be published in autumn 2026, with an implementing Royal Decree (setting the exact dataset, deadlines and exceptions) anticipated in early 2027. This leaves under 12 months between final rules and the 1 January 2028 entry into force, which some observers view as a tight timeline for large-scale IT builds.
In-scope businesses should confirm their Peppol setup is future-proof, audit invoice-data quality now, and monitor the DPA and Council of State opinions for final dataset and scope details.