From Wednesday afternoon, April 27, 7 million citizens will be able to use the digital tax platform Tax-on-web again to complete their annual tax return.
–
After the activation of Tax-on-web, a period of more than two months follows in which all taxpayers must submit their 2022 return form (on the income and expenses for the year 2021). The exact end date for completing the declaration will be announced tomorrow by the federal Minister of Finance, Vincent Van Peteghem (CD&V).
For digital returns, via Tax-on-web, the deadline is usually in the first half of July. For the small group of taxpayers who continue to stick to a paper tax return form, the finish line was always slightly earlier in previous years, towards the end of June. And anyone who hires a representative to complete the tax return, such as an accountant, will probably have the time until October again this year.
Pre-filled
For the largest group of taxpayers, the Federal Public Service Finance has once again prepared a ‘simplified declaration proposal’ (VVA). This means that their tax return form has been fully completed in advance by the tax authorities. Last year, 3.7 million taxpayers – or more than half of the total – received a VVA in the (electronic) letterbox.
Attention: anyone who receives a VVA must always thoroughly check whether the homework of the tax authorities is correct. In 2020, quite a few VVAs turned out to be incorrectly completed. ‘To reduce the risk of errors or missing data’, Minister Van Peteghem therefore ordered the FPS Finance last year to send out 200,000 VVAs less than in 2020. Taxpayers with a more complex profile (for example, with all kinds of expenditure that entitle tax credits), and of which the tax authorities do not automatically have all the data, no longer received a VVA in 2021. This cautious approach will probably also be maintained this year.
Another ten codes added
In any case, the declaration form has become a bit longer. For residents of the Flemish Region, the declaration has a total of 839 codes this year. That is ten more than last year, according to an analysis by Jef Wellens, tax expert at Wolters Kluwer. The most important innovations concern the declaration of real estate abroad, extra earnings in the sharing economy or associations and a new tax advantage for the installation at home of a charging station for electric cars.
• Record number of 839 codes on tax return
In practice, all those codes are not that bad. Analyzes by the FPS Finance show that 40 percent of taxpayers fill in less than ten codes, and that less than twenty codes are sufficient for 80 percent. The titanic work – filling in more than sixty codes – only occurs in 0.01 percent of taxpayers.
–
