Belgium Eyes Tax on Non-Profits’ €2.7bn Profit
Belgium’s non-profit sector booked €2.7 billion in profit in 2025 yet paid only about €80 million in taxes, an investigation has found — and that gap has now put the sector squarely in the government’s fiscal crosshairs. An analysis of the annual accounts of 17,000 non-profits (vzw’s) and foundations by Het Laatste Nieuws, published Tuesday, found the sector turned over just under €55 billion, more than the entire construction industry.
The findings land as the “Arizona” coalition government of Prime Minister Bart De Wever searches for new revenue to close a mounting federal budget deficit, prompting Finance Minister Jan Jambon to examine extending corporate tax to organisations that have long been exempt.
A sector that keeps its profits
The disparity stems from how non-profits are taxed. Organizations acting for social purposes may retain their profit in full, whereas ordinary companies surrender roughly a quarter of profit to the tax authority. More than half of all sector profit last year was booked by just 100 organisations, according to Het Laatste Nieuws.
Most small associations would be untouched under the plan reportedly under consideration: organizations with less than €50,000 in turnover would be exempt, which the investigation finds would shield about 90% of all vzw’s — the local sports clubs, youth movements and hobby associations.
“If we tax those who make profits more heavily, that must also apply to the health funds,” Finance Minister Jan Jambon has said, as reported by 21news.
Health insurers top the list
At the centre of the debate are Belgium’s health insurers (ziekenfondsen), which offer commercial hospitalization insurance while enjoying non-profit status. Since the 1990s they have booked high, untaxed annual profits on those policies — €317 million last year, by the investigation’s count. A tax of 20% to 25%, the rate the government is weighing, would yield the treasury €64 million to €80 million.
Hospitals and nursing homes also loom large. Hospitals have been exempt from profit tax for decades, but the plan names them explicitly as organisations competing with private operators. The investigation offers an illustration: an ophthalmologist in private practice pays tax on consultation profits, but the same consultations performed inside a hospital remain untaxed.
For nursing homes, the picture is mixed. The sector contains genuine non-profits alongside vehicles of commercial companies using the vzw structure to escape tax — but the pure non-profits risk being caught in the same net.
Some would be spared
The proposal may be narrower than a simple levy on €2.7 billion would suggest. The government is reportedly considering exempting income from donations, which would largely spare organisations such as the King Baudouin Foundation, the Red Cross, Médecins Sans Frontières, Caritas and the Foundation Against Cancer. Without gifts, their profit drops to near zero. One-off charity campaigns, such as the Red Cross’s annual sticker sale, would also be left alone.
Some large bodies already pay up. Research centre Imec has paid profit tax since 2017 — nearly €20 million last year, despite its non-profit status. Football club KRC Genk was forced to pay €14 million in back taxes after a years-long dispute over its use of the vzw structure, and the Boerenbond farmers’ union paid €12 million via its commercial subsidiaries, including Aveve shops and the Acerta social secretariat. Other commercially active organisations still escape the tax, including the Atomium, event venues Brussels Expo, concert hall Ancienne Belgique, and Antwerp Zoo — direct competitors of Marc Coucke’s Pairi Daiza, which does pay tax.
An “ideological war” over solidarity
Charitable organisations reacted sharply to the proposal, calling it an “unacceptable tax on solidarity.” The fiercest resistance has come from the health funds. Paul Callewaert, chairman of the socialist health fund Solidaris, told VRT NWS that health funds and private insurers are fundamentally different institutions. “Private insurers insure people for profit; health funds insure people for social protection,” he said, adding that health funds must accept all members regardless of health risk and reinvest their revenue for members.
“Then it becomes impossible for us to improve the policies,” Callewaert warned. “That is not a tax on profit, but on social protection.” He described the push as “an ideological war.”
Writing in De Wereld Morgen, Tim Joye of the group Geneeskunde voor het Volk argued the measure would raise premiums for the roughly 4.3 million people insured through a health fund, whose policies run €15 to €25 a month versus €45 or more for private insurers. “Instead of tackling this structural distortion, they now opt for a tax increase,” he wrote, predicting the gains would flow to shareholders of DKV, AG Insurance and AXA, and the costs to patients.
What happens next
According to 21news, the Finance Ministry’s note sets out two scenarios: the far-reaching option of subjecting associations and foundations as a rule to 25% corporate tax with exceptions, and a more targeted approach that keeps the current regime for core associative activities while taxing income from commercial ones. The note reportedly mentions a €25,000 turnover threshold, while HLN reports the government plans a €50,000 threshold — a discrepancy that remains unresolved.
Neither scenario has been approved. Both are options on the finance minister’s desk feeding into the budget negotiations, where reported openness from the CD&V party to taxing vzw’s sits uneasily alongside union and health-fund resistance. How much revenue the measure would actually raise — given the exemptions for donations, small organisations and possibly education — remains one of the most important unanswered questions.
For now, the fight is less about a specific rate than about a principle: whether organisations that describe themselves as acting for society should keep a fiscal privilege that ordinary businesses do not.