Real Estate

Belgians regularized massive black money at the last minute

In the last week of 2020, almost 100 million euros in black money was submitted to the tax authorities for regularization. This is evident from figures from the FPS Finance. For regional taxes, fraudsters only had time until December 31, 2020 to confess their sins and pay a regularization tax.

Many have waited until the last minute, it turns out. In total, the tax authorities received regularization applications for 318 million euros in the whole of 2020. It is expected that about 10 million euros will be added, because in certain cases it was possible to make a provisional declaration of 1 euro by the deadline and then come up with the correct amount within 6 months. There are, for example, 24 files.

The final amount of the FPS Finance only contains figures on federal, Walloon and Brussels taxes. At the Flemish level, the regularization option also expired on 31 December. This concerns Flemish inheritance and registration taxes. The cabinet of Budget Minister Matthias Diependaele (N-VA) has announced that there has also been a year-end increase at Flemish level.

In 2020, the Flemish administration ultimately counted 52 files, representing an amount to be regularized of at least 29.2 million euros. In addition, sums are added because for ten files the option to declare only 1 euro was used for the time being.

For the time being, the levy for the regularization yields 11.5 million euros for Flanders. Diependaele ultimately thinks it will come even closer to the 25 million euros proposed in the budget. But there is no big increase compared to the past few years. ‘It stops somewhere,’ says Diependaele. “The net around the fraudsters is closing thanks to international agreements.”

Regional regularization is therefore no longer possible, but it is still possible for evaded federal taxes. Anyone who still has black money should take into account that the parties of the De Croo government have written in their coalition agreement that the possibility of fiscal regularization will also end on a federal level at the end of 2023.

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