E-invoicing in Belgium

The mandate is already live

Every VAT-registered business established in Belgium must issue and receive structured electronic invoices for B2B transactions since 1 January 2026. There is no phasing by company size: sole traders are covered on the same day as large groups.

Only three exemptions exist: businesses in bankruptcy, those under the flat-rate scheme, and those carrying out exclusively operations exempted by Article 44 of the VAT Code: doctors, dentists, psychologists and similar professions.

A PDF is no longer enough. An invoice emailed as a PDF is not an electronic invoice under Belgian law, however well presented. What counts is machine-readable structured data.

What actually arrives

The required format is Peppol BIS Billing 3.0. Behind that name sits something concrete: it is UBL 2.1, meaning XML, aligned with the European EN 16931 standard.

So the file landing in your inbox is an .xml that shows nothing but tags when you double-click it. That is not your supplier making a mistake, and not a corrupted file: it is exactly what the law requires them to send.

Peppol BIS is not a fourth format beside UBL and CII. It is a tightened variant of UBL that makes certain optional fields mandatory, the buyer reference in particular. The format comparison puts those profiles back in order.

The channel is Peppol, and nothing else

Belgium chose a decentralised model: no central government platform through which everything passes, unlike Italy. Invoices travel over the Peppol network, from one access point to another.

One point deserves attention if you were relying on the free government option: Hermes ceased all activity on 16 December 2025. The gateway that turned Peppol invoices into emails is gone. Every business now needs a private access point, which means a subscription.

Some relief there: the cost of that subscription carries an enhanced 120% tax deduction for SMEs, from 2024 through 2027.

What non-compliance costs

Penalties escalate quickly, and apply per infringement:

• €1,500 for a first infringement
• €3,000 for a second
• €5,000 for each one after that

A conditional tolerance period ran from January to March 2026. It has passed.

Frequently missed: the obligation covers receiving as much as issuing. A business that sends its own invoices correctly but cannot receive its suppliers’ is in breach. And an invoice addressed to you counts as received whether or not anyone opens it.

Open the file now

Receiving is useless if the file stays unreadable when you need to check an amount, a due date or an IBAN. Your access point delivers the invoice; it does not necessarily show it to you in plain language.

Drop the file on the home page: the invoice appears laid back out (supplier, customer, lines, VAT breakdown, totals, bank details) with any departure from EN 16931 listed underneath.

No account, no installation, and the file never leaves your browser: it is read on your own machine and sent to no server. Which matters when the document carries your customers’ names and a bank account number.

Always keep the original file

A common and expensive mistake: print the invoice to PDF, file the PDF, discard the XML.

A PDF produced from an e-invoice is no longer an e-invoice. It is a representation of one, with the structured data gone. For the tax authority, the structured file as you received it is what counts.

Print as much as you like to read it or send it to your accountant, but keep the original .xml beside it, unchanged.