Small and medium-sized enterprises in Belgium paid €1.66bn in extra taxes after audits last year, with the number of audits on the rise in recent years.
According to reporting in L'Echo, 102,652 audits of SMEs were conducted in 2025, with around 1 in 4 audited tax returns having to be amended.
The amended tax returns saw an increase on the income subjected to tax by an average of just under €40,000 per SME.
According to Accountable, a finance app targeted at small businesses, tax authorities in Belgium use data mining and algorithms to spot irregularities between VAT submissions, banking, and turnover data.
Tax auditors can request documents from the last 3 years, and where fraud is suspected, the range can stretch to 7 years.
In total, 679 large companies were also audited last year, with 54% of these audits leading to changes in the tax base and an average additional tax take of €145,534.
The figures, based on data from FPS Finance, represent a significant increase since 2017 when just over 57,000 SMEs were audited.
Belgium has been introducing measures to ensure it collects all tax by clamping down on fraud and accounting errors.
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.
The Federal coalition agreement identified the fight against tax fraud as essential for improving the public finances.
To cut down on fraud, other measures the Federal government has introduced include mandatory e-invoicing for business-to-business transactions via the Peppol network and a new VAT receipt lottery which will roll out next year.
