VAT-registered enterprises

Almost 127,000 enterprises created in 2022

Enterprises
Almost 127,000 enterprises created in 2022

There were 1,143,403 VAT-registered enterprises in Belgium on 31 December 2022. This is what emerged from the new results of Statbel, the Belgian statistical office. This represents an annual growth of 4.5%. This growth is slightly higher than the figure of 4.2% recorded in 2021, and significantly higher than the 3.2% average growth over the last 10 years.

The number of enterprise births amounted to 126,858 units, or 10.7% more than in 2021, while 78,062 enterprises ceased their activities, or 10.4% more than in 2021.

Professional, scientific and technical activities is the sector with the highest number of enterprises

Since 2017, the sector Professional, scientific and technical activities (Nace M) has been the sector with the highest number of enterprises in Belgium. There were 224,068 of them on 31/12/2022, or 3.9% more than a year earlier. This sector also saw the most births in 2022: 22,183 enterprise births and 13,526 de-registrations.

With 188,715 VAT-registered enterprises, Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (Nace G) is the second largest sector. There were 15,734 births and 16,185 de-registrations in this sector in 2022. As a result, the sector records a decline of 0.5% in 2022.

The third sector, Construction (Nace F), accounts for 157,378 enterprises. There were 16,434 births as against 10,874 de-registrations in this sector. This results in an annual growth of 4%.

Table 1
Content

Number of start-ups of enterprises subject to VAT according to legal form and administrative geography, most recent year

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Table 2
Content

Number of active enterprises subject to VAT according to employer class and location of the head office, most recent year

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Purpose and brief description

Number of VAT-registered units, deletions and active VAT-registered units since 2008, based on the business register DBRIS, per year, municipality or district (if the employment variable is present), economic activity (NACE-BEL), employment size class (2008 and seq.) and legal form.

Population

VAT-registered units

Periodicity

Annually.

Release calendar

Results available 9 months after the reference period

Definitions

Legal form VAT: Legal form as defined according to VAT requirements (at all points in accordance with the Nomenclature Table LU_COM. TU_COM_LGL_PSN_VAT)

Economic activity (NACE-BEL); Official nomenclature with an "X" at the end of the number since the information is only available for 4 positions.

NIS employment size class: NIS employment size class as defined in the official NIS nomenclature table

Active VAT-registered units: The active VAT-registered units on 31/12 were obtained via the method used to calculate this population in the monthly cubes of the VAT-registered units.

The creation dates as recalculated for the monthly statistic are taken into account: in some cases, the validity date is replaced by a transaction date in the monthly statistic. This method is applied at the annual level in order to remain consistent with the number of active VAT-registered units at the end of the year : these numbers must be identical in the monthly and annual statistic.

Creations (births) of VAT-registered units: The creations (VAT registrations) include the entities which were registered for VAT on 31 December of the year observed, but not on 31 December of the year before. They may or may not be new VAT-registered enterprises.

From the links below, you can focus your research on the population of creations or deletions from VAT registers for one or several years.

While these monthly figures exhaustively record the events of the life of a VAT-registered unit (first registration, deletion, new registration, emigration or immigration), those provided annually for the years 2008 and seq. are based on a comparison of annual photos taken on 31 December of each year. It follows that, for a given year, the number of "creations" or "deletions" observed in the annual statistic will necessarily be lower than the sum of the creations and deletions recorded in the monthly statistic. Only the number of VAT-registered units on 31 December of each year corresponds between these two statistics: we compare the status of VAT-registered units on 31 December: the creations include the entities that are registered for VAT on 31 December of the year observed, while they did not have that status on 31 December of the year before.

Deletions of VAT-registered units: The deletions include entities that were not registered for VAT on 31 December of the year observed, but that were registered for VAT on 31 December of the year before.

Remarks

Due to NACE quality improvement operations, the agriculture section has undergone some changes in 2021. This may lead to a break from this period.

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