A plea for unlimited economic activities for NPOs under Belgian law

Today NPOs in Belgium face two large uncertainties in legal terms that seriously hinder optimal deployment and further development of their activities. In the first place, they struggle with the ban on commercial activities, included in article 1 of the NPO-law. In jurisprudence and doctrine there is no clear line that can be drawn concerning the boundaries to and sanctioning of commercial, more general ‘economic’, activities that are undertaken by NPOs. Furthermore, nor has there been formulated an adjusted fiscal treatment. NPOs have no certainty about the fiscal regime according to which they will be taxed: as a legal entity or a corporation.

Itinera pleas for an adaptation of Belgian law to the current needs of NPOs and international standards. A liberalization of NPO activities, complemented by the creation of an adjusted legal framework, in terms of commercial and corporate law as well as in terms of fiscal law, needs to be put on the agenda of policy makers and politicians. This document wants to identify the different bottlenecks related to this topic.