A new VAT receipt lottery will be introduced by Belgium's National Lottery next year, with the aim of clamping down on tax evasion in the hospitality sector.
According to reports by Het Nieuwsblad, the idea is to encourage customers to ask for an official VAT receipt when they pay. Customers will then scan a QR code on the receipt to see if they have won a prize.
By requesting a VAT receipt, the transaction is recorded, making the VAT obligation harder to hide. The effect is to turn customers into inadvertent tax inspectors.
"By scanning that code via our app, participants will know immediately whether they are among the winners or not. Once approved by the Finance Ministry, the winners will have the prize paid directly into their account," National Lottery spokesperson Stephanie Deleul told Het Nieuwsblad.
Similar VAT lotteries exist in other EU countries, including Malta, which has had a system since 1997. More recently, Italy introduced a system in 2020.
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All Belgian hospitality businesses that turn over more than €25,000 a year from meals must have a so-called "white register". These registers link automatically to the Finance Ministry and share transaction and VAT receipt information.
Newer models, which became mandatory from July 2026, further cut down on fraud by shifting data storage from the register to cloud systems.
Around €5.2 billion in VAT goes uncollected each year across the Belgian economy, according to analysis by the European Commission in its VAT gap in Europe report last year.
This lost VAT is linked to deliberate evasion and fraud, business failures and accounting errors.
Other measures taken to cut down on fraud include the introduction of mandatory e-invoicing for business-to-business transactions via the Peppol network, which started in January this year.
