In the months between August and December last year, however, the tax authorities took in €913 million from people who still owed, but paid out rebates of €2.1 billion. That’s a reversal of the trend of the last few years, when the balance was positive in favour of the government (see chart).

The apparent treasury deficit, of course, is only notional: it does not take account of the sums paid by taxpayers in prepayment. If anything, the large size of the rebates involved suggests taxpayers are overestimating their own liability, leading to overpayments that require rebates.

One reason for the improved speed in pay-outs, meanwhile, is the new Taxon- Web system of online declarations. As a result, 3.4 million people received their final bill before the end of the year, compared to only 104 people five years ago. Another 1.6m got their bills (or their rebates) in January and February this year.

One suggestion that has been raised is that the government deals with rebates speedily in order to include them in the budget for 2009, a year which was already written off as a budget disaster. As a consequence of the early rebates, the year 2010 will be spared the effect.

•Cases of tax fraud are never out of time, the Constitutional Court said last week, in a ruling that could see prosecutors offices across the country reopening a number of important cases. The principle of timing-out is common in Belgian law: for most offences, proceedings cannot be brought after a certain time limit. The court was ruling in the case of computer company ATC, where allegations of VAT fraud came to light in 1995 but are only now approaching the prosecution stage.