Belgium extends the list of tax havens

When a Belgian company or the permanent establishment of an overseas company makes – directly or indirectly – payments in excess of €100,000 during a “tax haven” during the previous tax year, they must report these in an annex “275 F” to their tax return.

Payments that are not reported are disallowed (Article 198, 1, 10° ITC), unless Belgium has signed a bilateral tax treaty with the other jurisdiction that has a non-discrimination or exchange of information clause.

A jurisdiction qualifies as a “tax haven” if it is listed in

• The Belgian blacklist of countries with zero or low taxation (Article 179 of the Royal Decree implementing the ITC);
  
  
• The European blacklist of non-cooperative jurisdictions; and
  
  
• The OECD’s list of the Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes ; this list includes jurisdictions that are non-compliant with the minimum OECD standards regarding the exchange of information on request (EOIR)).

The OECD list was limited to jurisdictions that were rated as “non-compliant” by the Global Forum.

In a practice note 2021/C/112 of 20 December 2021, the Belgian tax authorities extended this obligation to jurisdictions that are rated as “partially compliant”. Therefore, payments made to Barbados, Botswana, Dominica, Ghana, Kazakhstan, Liberia, Malta, Panama, the Seychelles, Saint Martin, Turkey and Vanuatu) since 1 January 2021 must be reported as well.

The current list can be found here.