The purpose of this message is to remind you of the Belgian transfer pricing (“TP”) documentation requirements that qualifying companies have to meet in the near future.
See https://www.pwc.be/transferpricing and the relevant tax insights of 14 June 2016 and 15 December 2016 for a summary of the Belgian TP documentation requirements (qualifying companies, content of the forms, deadlines etc.).
Administrative tolerance for Electronic filing of the TP documentation related documents using the appropriate tools
In principle, the following deadlines need to be adhered to:
- Country-by-country notification (275 CBC NOT): to be submitted at the latest on the last day of the group reporting period; the filing deadline is approaching in particular for reporting periods ending on or after 31 December 2017.
- Master file (275 MF): to be submitted at the latest 12 months after the last day of the group reporting period; the filing deadline is approaching in particular if the group reporting period ended on 31 December 2016 or in the months following that date.
- Country-by-country report (275 CBC): to be submitted 12 months after the last day of the group reporting period; the filing deadline is approaching in particular if the group reporting period ended on 31 December 2016 or in the months following that date.
The Belgian tax authorities have granted, however, an administrative extension for the filing of the documents referred to above until 31 March 2018 for the first year of filing.
The tax authorities have confirmed that the above documents must be submitted through the electronic channels made available (or to be made available) through MyMinfinPro. Caution: several administrative and registration procedure steps need to be performed and certain eGov-roles need to be allocated before the tools can actually be accessed to submit the documents. Although a filing extension has been granted, please start the process early as it requires some time to complete the registration and obtain the necessary approvals and confirmations before the TP documentation related documents can actually be filed. PwC can assist you in meeting the filing requirements. Please also note that, at this time, the Belgian tax authorities have not yet made available some of the electronic formats (i.e. XML formats, e.g. country-by-country report and country-by-country notification). It is anticipated that fillable XML templates for Master file and Country-by-country notification will be made available shortly.
It cannot be denied that the submission of the required TP documentation related documents necessitates quite some efforts.
Please note that also the local file form 275 LF, which is to be submitted at the same time as the corporate income tax return (residents and non-residents), will have to be filed in the same way as explained above for accounting periods ending on or after 31 December 2017 (date of filing to be confirmed – likely end of September 2018);
Administrative tolerance for the filing of the local file form and the country-by-country notification for reporting periods ending at the latest on 30 December 2017
Only the following forms may still be filed by email as a signed PDF file to the address BEPS13@minfin.fed.be or through MyMinfinPro as an XML file. These forms relate to reporting periods ending between 31 December 2016 and 30 December 2017 at the latest:
- local file form (275 LF) to be filed together with the corporate tax return for accounting periods of the Belgian entity ending between 31 December 2016 and 30 December 2017 at the latest (linked to tax year 2017);
- country-by-country notification form (275 CBC NOT) ) for group reporting periods ending between 31 December 2016 and 30 December 2017 at the latest – filing must be done by no later than the date of closing of the group reporting period.
Administrative tolerance for enterprises without a legal representative in Belgium
All TP documentation related documents may be submitted as a signed PDF file or as an XML file by means of email to the following address: BEPS13@minfin.fed.be. The email must contain the message that you are an enterprise without a legal representative in Belgium and you are using the administrative tolerance of filing the documents by e-mail.
