Pillar II: draft law contains clarifications for minimum tax

At the end of 2023, the Pillar II rules were implemented in Belgian tax law. These rules provide for the introduction of a minimum tax of 15% for large international and domestic groups with a consolidated turnover of 750 million euros or more. For a detailed article of this measure, please refer to our article Belgium approves minimum taxation of 15% for large groups (Pillar 2).

In the course of 2024, entities that are part of a corporate group with a consolidated turnover of 750 million euros or more for at least two of the four previous reporting years were required to submit a Pillar II notification form via the MyMinfin platform.

This notification obligation means that one Belgian group entity, on behalf of all other Belgian group entities (if applicable), registers with the Belgian Tax Authorities in order to obtain a separate company number for Pillar II purposes for the group from the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE). In addition, the Pillar II notification must also mention, among other things, all ultimately held/intermediate/partially held parent entities, together with data from the consolidated financial statements.

Already when the Pillar II notification obligation was first applied, it became clear that the applicable legal text contains some ambiguities and gaps. To address these shortcomings, a draft law containing technical clarifications and corrections has been submitted to the federal parliament.

These are the following changes:

• Obligation to use the electronic platform of the tax authorities for all communication related to Pillar II compliance in Belgium.
• Clarification of a number of concepts:
  • Group and joint venture: adaptation to the definition as included in the OECD GloBE rules, to clarify that a joint venture is not initially considered a group entity; but as a separate category.
  • Submitting group entity: extension of the definition to allow joint ventures to qualify as a submitting group entity even when they fall within the scope of the Pillar II legislation.
• Taxpayer of the domestic additional tax: extension of the definition to include joint ventures and related parties established in Belgium.
• Clarification of the method of assessment of the Pillar II returns
• Investigation and assessment periods will be reduced from 10 to 6 years, except in the case of fraud.
• Designation of a General Representative:
  • A specific Belgian group entity must be elected as the group’s representative to the tax authorities. This entity will be allowed to act for all obligations related to the Belgian Pillar II rules.
  • If no choice is made, the tax administration will designate the entity that submits the tax return or information report as the representative.
• Corrections of some minor errors in the transposition of the European Pillar II Directive.

However, some important matters are not discussed in this draft law.

For example, there is still uncertainty about the template that should be used for the QDMTT return. Belgian group entities that are required to file a QDMTT return before 30 November 2025 remain in the dark about the information to be included and the practical submission modalities of the declaration.

In addition, there is still no postponement of the submission deadline of 30 November 2025.

At the time of publication of this article, the website of the FPS Finance does not yet mention any information about the proposed changes to the draft law.