Working in Belgium via Connexion

[nodric]

If the BTA do come after you (it's called a tax controle [sic] and they happen all the time anyway) and, they can show that you have undeclared income (burden of proof is on them) then, they will normally impose a penalty of 10% of the back taxes plus payment of those taxes.

They will then normally (great Belgian word - normally) go back 3 years in total and do the same maths. If you refuse to cooperate and they have evidence strong enough to pursue you they can they scream tax fraud and go back 7 years (used to be 5 but they change the law this year!).

If they prove fraud (IF) then they can impose penalties as high as 300%.

Now, before you all book your tickets out of here think.

If they do carry out a controle will they find anything and, will it be a lot?

If they find undeclared income then you are going to get a bill for around half of that amount. If the undeclared element is 100K a year for 3 years then you have a problem I suspect. If it's 20K a year catchback you still have a problem but, it may be manageable.

If they send you a bill for 100K then they might as well send you one for a million. You are not going to be able to pay it. Either you agree some hypothetical schedule to pay a grand a month for 100 months plus interest (that's 10 years) as well as paying much higher taxes on your 100% white income, oh and the SS, while becoming a whore for the BTW or you don't. You go bust. If you have a BVBA etc it takes the wrap, if not, you go bust (in Belgium only).

If you are a single guy in rented digs you will have fled long before you get the bill anyway. You won't tell anyone your last postal address at the time of this tax declaration, you won't tell Experian et al and will continue to work under UK or other countries local regimes. If the BTA force you into going bust in Belgium you have the rest of the EU to choose from!

Despite comments to the contrary I am pretty sure the BTA are not going to drive us back into the sea as they need our income, spending power and tax receipts as much as they want companies to keep their operations locally.

Of course each and every case be treated on its own merit and no 'one size fits all' solution exists {Conx take note!]. You just have to hold your own, sit tight and get on with life. If they come they come, nothing will stop that. What I am certain of is that if you go to them you will just hasten that day and, make it a certainty.

I noticed Conx spamming everyone again this morning with more of their rhetoric. I suggest you read back a few posts and follow the lawyers advice. Ignore the latest badly worded and formatted attempt to convince you to pay them your own money to solve their own tax demands!

They messed up and got caught, you didn't and you paid them a lot of money for processing your invoices and payments so why now should you bail them out? They should be making refunds to everyone who is facing a potential liability through their commercial greed and stupidity!

[nodric]

Permanent Establishment Tax

I spent sometime reading the facts about Permanent Establishment Tax today following the latest spam shot from Conx.

Read the Conx documents carefully! I also still don't see any official stamps or officers names etc but, they talk always about non residents!

If as a contractor you are a resident of Belgium (someone who has registered at the commune) then this does not apply as you will already pay all required categories of tax on your returns and if Permanent Establishment Tax is due it will already be on your return. Of course any shortfall in declared funds is an issue but it is certainly not Permanent Establishment Tax.

Permanent Establishment Tax is paid by an overseas company who can be shown to have a Permanent Establishment in the country in question. What the BTA have done is demonstrate that Conx have such a Permanent Establishment by virtue of the agents (contractors) carrying out the work in Belgium. Any costs of Permanent Establishment Tax are to be paid by them and not by the contractor as the contractor has already registered locally and any tax types due will be levied.

If however, the contractor is not locally registered and can be shown to have his/her own Permanent Establishment then indeed the tax would be due but, should be paid directly to the BTA non residents section and not via Conx.

What is clear is that Conx now have to pay this and so will be passing this charge onto the contractors (assuming anyone stays with them) as they have to find the money from somewhere.

Before you get conned into handing over Permanent Establishment Tax for your own activities go speak to your accountant and ask if it applies. If you are registered with the commune then you are resident for tax purposes and Permanent Establishment Tax does not apply as being a resident is Permanent Establishment

Want to check the facts try a Google for Permanent Establishment Tax

[Pepso]

they will normally impose a penalty of 10% of the back taxes plus payment of those taxes.

They will then normally (great Belgian word - normally) go back 3 years in total and do the same maths. If you refuse to cooperate and they have evidence strong enough to pursue you they can they scream tax fraud and go back 7 years (used to be 5 but they change the law this year!).

If they prove fraud (IF) then they can impose penalties as high as 300%.

Hi Nodric,
can you post here the source where you got these figures? If I were sure that 10% applies, of course I would not pay anything to CNX. However, if your last scenario applies (300%) I am not so sure that sitting tight and getting on with life is the best option.
There is another aspect in this nightmare: I cannot live forever with the fear of opening my box letter and finding the yellow letter from BTA. As for me, I prefer paying on a 75% basis today than several dozen KEuros tomorrow. Nobody knows what BTA is going to do in the coming months but looking at the current economic situation of the country I am sure that they need money and they have our names...

[conexion]

http://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/loi/loi.htm - I was not precise when I said 100% in the previous post.

Art. 444. En cas d'absence de declaration ou en cas de déclaration incomplète ou inexacte, les impôts dus sur la portion des revenus non déclarés sont majorés d'un accroissement d'impôt fixé d'après la nature et la gravité de l'infraction, selon une échelle dont les graduations sont déterminées par le Roi et allant de 10 % à 200 % des impôts dus sur la portion des revenus non déclarés.
En l'absence de mauvaise foi, il peut etre renoncé au minimum de 10 % d'accroissement.
Le total des impôts dus sur la portion des revenus non déclarés et de l'accroissement d'impôt ne peut dépasser le montant des revenus non déclarés

[nodric]

Hi Nodric,
can you post here the source where you got these figures? If I were sure that 10% applies, of course I would not pay anything to CNX. However, if your last scenario applies (300%) I am not so sure that sitting tight and getting on with life is the best option.
There is another aspect in this nightmare: I cannot live forever with the fear of opening my box letter and finding the yellow letter from BTA. As for me, I prefer paying on a 75% basis today than several dozen KEuros tomorrow. Nobody knows what BTA is going to do in the coming months but looking at the current economic situation of the country I am sure that they need money and they have our names...

PM me and I'll put you in touch with the tax accountant I am consulting on all this. He can give you some illustrations based on your personal circumstances. (I am not affiliated with him I am purely a client)

I also received some very interesting information by email from a 'source' which makes me even more convinced that paying money to Hugo would be just wrong. To protect that person I won't paste their email here but if you PM me I'll give you the highlights.

[nodric]

http://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/loi/loi.htm - I was not precise when I said 100% in the previous post.

Art. 444. En cas d'absence de declaration ou en cas de déclaration incomplète ou inexacte, les impôts dus sur la portion des revenus non déclarés sont majorés d'un accroissement d'impôt fixé d'après la nature et la gravité de l'infraction, selon une échelle dont les graduations sont déterminées par le Roi et allant de 10 % à 200 % des impôts dus sur la portion des revenus non déclarés.
En l'absence de mauvaise foi, il peut etre renoncé au minimum de 10 % d'accroissement.
Le total des impôts dus sur la portion des revenus non déclarés et de l'accroissement d'impôt ne peut dépasser le montant des revenus non déclarés

Translated for those like me who need it

Key phrase highlighted means, if you did not mean to do it and were acting in good faith then the fine is 10% of the unpaid taxes (not the whole undeclared sum, just the tax element levied.)

The other important element is that the fine/unpaid tax bill cannot exceed the amount of money not declared!


Art. 444. If no declaration or in case of incomplete or inaccurate statement, the taxes due on the portion of unreported income are increased by an increase of tax established according to the nature and seriousness of the offense, according a scale whose graduations are determined by the King and from 10% to 200% of taxes due on the portion of income not reported.
In the absence of bad faith, it can be waived at least 10% increase.
The total taxes due on the portion of unreported income and the tax increase may not exceed the amount of unreported income

[Eoin Kelly]

contacting connexion?

Is anyone else having problems contacting Connexion in the last few days?
No answer to any emails and the +352 number doesn't even ring out, seems to be disconnected!!!

[nodric]

Is anyone else having problems contacting Connexion in the last few days?
No answer to any emails and the +352 number doesn't even ring out, seems to be disconnected!!!

It does appear that they have gone dark at their Luxembourg offices. I did warn everyone not to stay with them and pay them any money and I so wanted to sign up to their compliant scheme

If anyone gets further details please post them for the benefit of the many...

I started a thread to track this here

[oldtimerron]

Good news, (for me not for you)!

I had an interview Monday and have been accepted for the role of .... my present job... but in it's new location near Barcelona.

For me this means a small drop in gross pay, and a *substantial* raise in net pay courtesy of the reduced tax (It works out I'll have nearly 5 times the net income AND the living costs are a lot less AND I get a bigger apartment for less than I pay now, and use of the condo pool!). It's light at the end of a very long dark tax-penalty tunnel for me, I couldn't be happier.

I'll still be paying off the tail end of my settlement, but instead of paying it off out of a tiny net income, I will clear it very quickly.

Good luck with your BTA investigation, I've had mine and from my experience I say leave and don't come back. If you have family in Belgium and think it would be better to settle, well I had a wife, financial stress breaks up marriages and families.

If you think the BTA is making some sort of compromise to get more tax, you are deluded. Have you actually been offered a settlement? Or have you simply been told to confess and promised lenient treatment?

You're sitting in front of a computer, with the skills in your head, and that computer could be anywhere, and the skills travel with you. You don't need Belgium. By hanging around you're setting yourselves up for years of misery that you just don't need. You deserve better and you can get it elsewhere.

You don't need lenient treatment from Belgium, you need normal treatment from one of the many other countries in Europe. Belgium is the country with the tax problem, the highest in Europe by far, not you.

If you are a key person to the team, refuse to renew and offer them a small discount if you can work elsewhere. If they don't do it, well their loss.

I don't know the details of the CNX 'golden list', but it sounds like a straight 'apology letter' confession to me (see the second video).

http://boingboing.net/2008/07/28/law...d-cop-agr.html

I see many people here confessing, filling in details of what they've been up to, then agreeing to meet up to discuss it! I remember mine as clear as day. My boss who had been paying several people in black, invited us to an office in Brussels to discuss the next years pay deal. He got us to write down our names and how much net income we'd declared, and how much black he'd paid. Then once all that was done, he handed the form to an assistant who explained to us that he was from the tax office and the company had settled a penalty and now it was our turn. After a long lecture, many of agreed to settle again on a promise it was only the actual black income for that year.

Then I got a letter backdating the assumption of black income back 3 years.

So once again, for my final time in this thread, I say leave Belgium if you have dealt with CNX, even if you are not on the dodgy contract, you will still get caught up in this and all it takes to fix it, is a simple change of location to a cheaper country.

[nodric]

Good news, (for me not for you)!

I had an interview Monday and have been accepted for the role of .... my present job... but in it's new location near Barcelona.

No jealous at all but, wish you all the best and great success in the sunshine! Trust me, I am not far behind your thinking