ViDA VAT in the digital age: what changes for shops, platforms and invoicing

What is ViDA? VAT in the Digital Age is an EU package with three pillars: digital reporting with mandatory e-invoicing for trade between member states from 1 July 2030, new rules making platforms liable for VAT on short-term rentals and passenger transport from 1 July 2028, and a single VAT registration across the EU from the same date. Belgium transposed its first part in a law its Chamber adopted on 22 October 2026, applying from 1 January 2027 and 1 July 2029.

This guide is written for a company outside Belgium, a UK or US store, a booking platform, a software vendor, that sells into Belgium and the rest of the EU. It sets out the timeline and, for each date, what your systems need to handle. The VAT treatment of your own sales is a question for your tax adviser; our angle is the software that has to carry it out.

The three pillars of VAT in the digital age

The directive, number 2025/516, was published on 25 March 2025 and has been in force since 14 April 2025. Part of it applied at once: a member state may now require domestic e-invoicing without asking Brussels for a derogation, and the e-invoice is the default rather than something the buyer must accept. Belgium already did so: since 1 January 2026 Belgian VAT-registered businesses exchange e-invoices through Peppol. What that requires is in e-invoicing in Belgium, and whether it applies to a company without a Belgian establishment in is Peppol mandatory in Belgium.

VAT in the digital age timeline

Belgium's ViDA law of October 2026

The Belgian government tabled bill DOC 56 1718 on 10 September 2026 to write the digital-age VAT rules into the Belgian VAT Code. The finance committee adopted it on 23 September and the plenary Chamber on 22 October 2026. It applies in two steps, on 1 January 2027 and 1 July 2029, and touches among other things the rules for call-off stock, goods you place with a fixed customer in another member state. At the time of writing it had not yet appeared in the Belgian Official Gazette. Separately, Belgium plans near-real-time e-reporting of invoices between Belgian businesses from 2028; that is still a draft, covered in Belgium e-reporting 2028. Other EU rules arriving in 2027 are listed in new EU rules for 2027.

What ViDA means for an online store selling into the EU

If you sell online to consumers in several member states, you charge the VAT of the customer's country and declare it through the One Stop Shop. For a non-EU seller of parcels up to 150 euro that is the Import One Stop Shop. ViDA adds from 1 July 2028 that more kinds of supplies fit in that same return, so you need fewer VAT registrations abroad. Your store therefore has to show the right rate per country and report per country. Shipping small parcels from outside the EU, also watch the EU 3 euro customs duty in force since 1 July 2026. The other rules for EU customers are in ecommerce legal requirements.

What ViDA means for booking platforms and rentals

This is the biggest shift. If a host rents out a holiday home through a platform and charges no VAT, the platform becomes the VAT-liable supplier from 1 July 2028 for stays of up to 30 nights. The platform then needs to know, per booking, who the host is and whether they charge VAT. A host taking bookings on their own site, a direct booking website with its own calendar, sits outside the platform rule and stays responsible. That turns the choice between platform and direct booking into a VAT choice too.

What ViDA means for your invoicing software

The direction matches what Belgium did in January: from PDF to structured e-invoice, and from an annual summary to data per invoice. A system that already sends UBL invoices through Peppol meets the Belgian duty; registering is covered in Peppol registration. By 2030 it also has to issue e-invoices to customers in other member states within 10 days. If you are building or buying Peppol invoicing software, make those fields and that deadline part of the brief; which packages handle Peppol today is in which software for Peppol.

What digital reporting asks in 2030

From 1 July 2030 a business supplying a business in another member state issues a structured e-invoice under the European standard within 10 days. The key data of that invoice go to the tax authority at the same time, close to real time. The recapitulative statement, the summary of intra-EU supplies filed monthly or quarterly today, disappears with it. Member states that already run their own system, as Belgium does with Peppol and its planned e-reporting, must align it with the EU model by 2035.

For your software that means three things. The invoice carries every field of the European standard EN 16931, including those still typed as free text today. It goes out automatically, not when someone presses send at the end of the month. And its data must match what your customer reports, because the tax authority lays both side by side. A package that already speaks Peppol has covered most of that road.

What ViDA means for a company with no EU customers yet

If you sell only at home today, outside the EU, ViDA touches you the day you take your first EU customer or list your first rental on an EU platform. Build with that day in mind: invoices in a structured format, VAT per customer country, and booking data that records who charges the VAT. Retrofitting those into a system built without them costs more than adding them at the start.