Problems with Belgian excise refund when moving from lease to ownership

Transport companies that refuel diesel in Belgium can reclaim the excise duties paid for trucks over 7.5 tonnes. In practice, the refund procedure generally runs smoothly, but with vehicles that move from lease to ownership an administrative bottleneck is appearing more and more often. This bottleneck can lead to full rejection of the excise refund for a period of several days.

The transition from lease to ownership: where does it go wrong?

At the end of the lease contract, the leasing company transfers the vehicle to the transport operator. Formally, this takes place through an Opdracht Tot Tenaamstelling (OTT), after which the RDW processes the new registration and issues a new registration certificate.

In practice, however, a time gap often arises between:

• the end date of the lease contract, and
• the date on which the new registration is processed by the RDW.

Example:

The lease ends on 31-12-2024, but the RDW only registers the vehicle in the entrepreneur's name as of 15-01-2025. During the period from 01-01-2025 through 14-01-2025, the vehicle therefore has no valid legal basis for excise refund.

Why is the excise refund excluded during this period?

The Belgian refund scheme requires that the diesel was purchased by the company that:

1. Owns the vehicle, or
2. Demonstrably leases the vehicle (with an active, valid lease contract).

During the "gap", neither of these situations applies:

• The lease contract has ended, so there is no entitlement as a leased vehicle
• The registration is not yet in the name of the transport company, so there is no entitlement as an owned vehicle

Fuel purchased during this interim period does not qualify for Belgian excise refund and will be rejected 100%.

This rejection is therefore unrelated to fuel card data, transactions or supporting documents: there is simply no legally valid vehicle status that the Belgian tax authorities accept.