>383 billion euros. In one year, 765 companies subject to Belgian taxregulations sent that amount to tax havens. This mainly happened withtemporary capital transfers to Dubai, a mechanism that amounts to taxevasion. Members of Parliament are silent, in full budgetary crisis.
>
>On October 26, 2022, it was the turn of the Finance Administration to be heard by the Finance and Budget Committee of the House. Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem (CD&V) was heard on 9 November.
>
>And then there was a shock. Both the representatives of the administration and the minister admitted for the first time that the astronomical amount of 383 billion euros in payments to tax havens for the year 2020 (declared in 2021) was not artificially inflated by daily transfers (the famous cash pooling), but that this amount was calculated without taking these cash pooling operations into account.
>
>Jean-François Vermeulen , general administrator of the general administration of the Special Tax Inspectorate, explained in his introduction to the parliamentary committee: “In the declarations relating to the 2021 tax year (payments in 2020) an amount of 578 billion euros was indicated. total amount therefore includes amounts related to cash pooling and overnights .”
​
With an efficient tax inspectorate, the government could improve so much in public transport, education, pensions or healthcare… but which party would dare to target those big guys?
As the article states clearly, large part of it could relate to cash pooling and overnights. Care to explain what is illegal about that?
We could have kept a lot of that flow in Belgium if we were not so hasty in scrapping the rules for coordination centres and NID (although maybe these were not the best use of government money).
Company taxes should be levied where economic activity takes place, if some companies want to pool money in other jurisdictions I don’t think that is a bad thing in itself.
I don´t know what´s legal and illegal in this case. I do know that financial and fiscal crimes are often hard to tackle. These things can be very complicated and work intensive. If the other party has good lawyers it could take years to get results. So in an ideal world we dealt with all this, but in reality it´s almost impossible.
The article is not up to par with the quality that I’m used to from Apache. The language used (as if we know the full 383 billion is tax evasion / illegal) and the conclusion drawn in the last paragraph make it smell like agenda-pushing.
Not saying there is no issue here, but I don’t expect clickbait/sensationalistic journalism from a newspaper claiming to do investigative journalism.
Ofcourse theres no political interest to do something about this, because those big companies own the politicians, its just organized crime at the highest level, no suprise there
Reminds me of a post a few days ago about the Belgian state debt.
OK, maybe not all this money is taxable, but over a 10-20 years period.
Also reminds me of the panama papers, anyone knows what happened after that discovery?
While the average peasant gets taxed to death.
So glad I’m out of there.
Belgian taxes are too high…
Like in every other country too that it not a tax haven country, nothing new.
9 comments
>383 billion euros. In one year, 765 companies subject to Belgian taxregulations sent that amount to tax havens. This mainly happened withtemporary capital transfers to Dubai, a mechanism that amounts to taxevasion. Members of Parliament are silent, in full budgetary crisis.
>
>On October 26, 2022, it was the turn of the Finance Administration to be heard by the Finance and Budget Committee of the House. Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem (CD&V) was heard on 9 November.
>
>And then there was a shock. Both the representatives of the administration and the minister admitted for the first time that the astronomical amount of 383 billion euros in payments to tax havens for the year 2020 (declared in 2021) was not artificially inflated by daily transfers (the famous cash pooling), but that this amount was calculated without taking these cash pooling operations into account.
>
>Jean-François Vermeulen , general administrator of the general administration of the Special Tax Inspectorate, explained in his introduction to the parliamentary committee: “In the declarations relating to the 2021 tax year (payments in 2020) an amount of 578 billion euros was indicated. total amount therefore includes amounts related to cash pooling and overnights .”
​
With an efficient tax inspectorate, the government could improve so much in public transport, education, pensions or healthcare… but which party would dare to target those big guys?
As the article states clearly, large part of it could relate to cash pooling and overnights. Care to explain what is illegal about that?
We could have kept a lot of that flow in Belgium if we were not so hasty in scrapping the rules for coordination centres and NID (although maybe these were not the best use of government money).
Company taxes should be levied where economic activity takes place, if some companies want to pool money in other jurisdictions I don’t think that is a bad thing in itself.
I don´t know what´s legal and illegal in this case. I do know that financial and fiscal crimes are often hard to tackle. These things can be very complicated and work intensive. If the other party has good lawyers it could take years to get results. So in an ideal world we dealt with all this, but in reality it´s almost impossible.
The article is not up to par with the quality that I’m used to from Apache. The language used (as if we know the full 383 billion is tax evasion / illegal) and the conclusion drawn in the last paragraph make it smell like agenda-pushing.
Not saying there is no issue here, but I don’t expect clickbait/sensationalistic journalism from a newspaper claiming to do investigative journalism.
Ofcourse theres no political interest to do something about this, because those big companies own the politicians, its just organized crime at the highest level, no suprise there
Reminds me of a post a few days ago about the Belgian state debt.
OK, maybe not all this money is taxable, but over a 10-20 years period.
Also reminds me of the panama papers, anyone knows what happened after that discovery?
While the average peasant gets taxed to death.
So glad I’m out of there.
Belgian taxes are too high…
Like in every other country too that it not a tax haven country, nothing new.