Filing deadline for companies

Filing deadline for companies

The corporate tax return should this year be filed ultimately by 24 September 2020. This seems a simple rule. This simple rule only applies to companies that close their accounting year from 31 December 2019 to 31 January 2020. At the beginning of June, the method of calculating the deadline was extremely simplified.

Principle

According to the letter of the law, for filing their corporate tax return companies have a period which cannot be shorter than one month after the approval of the annual accounts or the profit and loss accounts. On the other hand this period cannot be longer than six months after the closing of the accounting year.

However, on June 4th 2020, the tax administration published a new and much simpler calculation method. You simply have 7 months from the first day of the month following the balance sheet date. If the submission deadline falls on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday, the submission deadline shall be the first working day thereafter.

In practice

If your accounting year ends between 31 December 2019 and 31 January 2020, the ultimate filing date for the return is 24 September 2020. This has nothing to do with calculations, but is an administrative decision.

Next it is 7 months after the balance sheet date. This gives the following possibilities for fiscal year 2020 (deadline for submission):

End of accounting year ...
from 31/12/2019 to 31/01/2020 = 24/09/2020
from 01/02/2020 to 29/02/2020 = 30/09/2020
from 01/03/2020 to 31/03/2020 = 03/11/2020
from 01/04/2020 to 30/04/2020 = 30/11/2020
from 01/05/2020 to 31/05/2020 = 04/01/2021
from 01/06/2020 to 30/06/2020 = 01/02/2021
from 01/07/2020 to 31/07/2020 = 01/03/2021
from 01/08/2020 to 31/08/2020 = 31/03/2021
from 01/09/2020 to 30/09/2020 = 30/04/2021
from 01/10/2020 to 31/10/2020 = 31/05/2021
from 01/11/2020 to 30/11/2020 = 30/06/2021
from 01/12/2020 to 30/12/2020 = 02/08/2021

Delay

Under the previous calculation method, the tax administration left the statutory date of your company. If you postponed that meeting, you also had to request a postponement for filing the tax return.

The Royal Decree n° 4 of 9 April 2020 holding several provisions on co-ownership and corporate and associations law with respect to the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic allows you - under certain conditions - to postpone the general meeting with maximum 10 weeks.
When calculating based on the balance sheet date, postponing the general meeting does not affect the ultimate filing date. In this case, you are obliged to apply for an individual delay within the general filing period.

BIZTAX, the return filing tool for companies, is available as from 9 June 2020.