Successive tract operations

If your company provides services of a continuous nature over time (rentals of premises, recurring consultancy, security, cleaning...), it is common for you to have agreed with your clients on a periodic fee for such services (weekly, monthly, bimonthly...). Well, when passing on the VAT for these successive tract operations and knowing in which tax return to include them, what matters is not the period in which the services were provided, but the moment when their payment is due.

Thus, for example, if you own a cleaning company and started providing services to a client on May 1,2026, agreeing that the services for each month would be paid on the 5th of the following month, when filing the VAT return for the second quarter of 2026, your company will only have to declare the invoice for the services provided in May (which will be the only ones accrued in the second quarter). You must include the invoice for June in the VAT return for the third quarter, as the payment for that invoice is not due until July 5.

VAT must also be passed on on the date when payment is due in the case of supplies of water, electricity, gas, or telephone, and even in the supplies of other tangible assets. Specifically, your company must apply this rule to those supply operations in which you have reached the following agreements with your clients:

• That, for a certain period of time, you will make deliveries of your products continuously and based on their demand . That is, without having precisely defined the quantity of product to be supplied.
• And that, for that period of time, the sales conditions must have been agreed in advance (unit price, qualities, deadlines and delivery method, etc.).

The rule of exigibility, however, has two exceptions:

• If the payment occurs before the due date, VAT must be passed on on the payment date.
• When the period between the dates on which payments are due exceeds one year, your company must issue an invoice on December 31 and pass on - and pay to the Tax Office - the VAT that has accrued during the year up to that point.

TECHNICAL COMPLEMENT

MEMENTO Marginals

• Fiscal Reminder, marginal 9580 and 9582  

• If you are not a subscriber to the Fiscal Reminder, click here   to access the referenced margins in PDF format.

LEFEBVRE Articles

Note: LEFEBVRE articles are based on the current regulations at the time of their publication.

• Article Successive tract operations, published in Tax Notes & Tips on May 6,2026. Click here to access its content.
• If you are not a subscriber to Tax Notes & Tips, click here to access the referenced article in PDF format.