Belgian E-Invoicing Law Draft Revealed, Mandate Set for January 2026

The long-awaited draft document with proposed mandatory B2B e-Invoicing regulations was submitted to the Belgian parliament on January 5th, 2024. Last year’s political turmoil threatened the invoicing project as it was part of a contested budgetary bill.

The government wishes to complete the legislative process by the upcoming June 2024 elections. However, the country still has not obtained a decision derogating relevant regulations from the EU VAT Directive, which bars states from introducing electronic invoicing mandates. Without such a decision, the proposed law could not enter into force. That said, Belgium’s government applied for the appropriate decision in October 2023, so it is safe to assume it will be issued in time for the mandate’s deadline slated to start in January 2026. 

The proposed invoicing system will initially be based on Peppol’s existing 4-corner document exchange model. PEPPOL operates similarly to telecom providers. Just as you dial a number and your telecom provider connects with the recipient's provider, PEPPOL follows a similar mechanism.

The sender uploads the outgoing document to an access point of choice, and after fetching stakeholder routing data (PEPPOL ID) from the central PEPPOL directory, the sender’s access point forwards the document to the recipient’s access point, from where it can be freely downloaded. 

This particular solution is planned to be only temporary, as the final version of the system is set to add a so-called “5th corner” with an introduction of an e-reporting component. 

Comarch is an experienced provider of worldwide e-invoicing solutions, a longstanding member of OpenPEPPOL, and a certified PEPPOL Access Point. It provides its clients with fast and reliable electronic document exchange with public administration entities and companies operating within the network. For more information, contact Comarch experts.

There’s more you should know about e-invoicing in Belgium – learn more about the new and upcoming regulations.