Belgium’s National Lottery will fight tax fraud with prizes
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The Belgian state and the National Lottery signed a five-year agreement prioritizing responsible gaming and fighting tax fraud.
The agreement directs the lottery to encourage players toward lower-risk games, like traditional lotteries, and avoid increasing the number of players or amounts wagered. A Responsible Gaming Council, comprised mostly of independent experts, will review new games before they launch and recommend ways to protect players.
The National Lottery will also increase checks on retailers, conducting 2,000 “mystery shopping” visits annually to ensure compliance with laws, including those prohibiting sales to minors. By the end of the agreement, the lottery aims to identify 80% of all transactions across all channels, using a “player pass” to better detect problematic gambling behavior while protecting personal data. Beyond gaming, the agreement includes a plan to create a lottery linked to value-added tax (VAT) receipts.
The National Lottery will develop a proposal with the Federal Public Service Finance to incentivize customers to request receipts from businesses, especially restaurants and bars. This aims to improve transaction tracking and reduce VAT fraud, building on similar systems already tested in Portugal, Malta, and Italy. Belgium expects to launch this receipt lottery around mid-2027, allowing time for the hospitality sector to adopt new “smart” cash registers that became mandatory on July 1st.
