The EOR process in Belgium: five stages from offer to payday

The process starts before anyone writes an offer, with a check of which joint committee (commission paritaire / paritair comité) governs the job. In Belgium the sector committee, not the job title, decides the minimum salary scale, the timing of indexation and which bonuses are owed. Get this wrong and every later step inherits the mistake.

For most office roles hired through an EOR, the answer is PC 200, the auxiliary committee for white-collar workers. Its scales sort jobs into four classes, A to D, and the lowest point on the January 2026 scale, the starter rate, is €2,242.80 a month for Class A, climbing to €2,555.72 for a Class D starter. A senior engineer or sales lead will normally sit well above those floors, but the class still matters because the scale rises with experience and with each January indexation.

Working time is set here too. PC 200 uses a 38-hour week on average over the year, and a part-time job needs a written contract stating the schedule. If the person will work from home on a regular basis, that should be agreed now rather than discovered after the start date.

At Employer of Record Belgium this stage ends with a written cost estimate that lists salary, insurance, both annual bonuses (13th month and double holiday pay) and employer ONSS at the 2026 rate of 25.00%, so the budget you approve is the budget you will see on the invoice.

Settle the starting salary you actually intend to pay at this point. The wage norm for 2025-2026 was fixed at 0% by royal decree of 12 September 2025, which limits real increases in wage costs over the period, although indexation and scale steps are still guaranteed. A clear figure at the outset avoids reopening the offer once the candidate has accepted it.

Once the numbers are agreed, the EOR drafts the employment contract and the employee signs it with the EOR as employer. Belgian law lets an open-ended contract exist without a written document, but nobody sensible relies on that. Writing is compulsory for fixed-term, specific-task, replacement and part-time contracts, and for clauses such as a non-compete.

A fixed-term contract has to be signed in writing no later than the first day, or it is treated as open-ended. Chains of fixed-term contracts are tightly limited: up to four in a row, each lasting at least three months and together no more than two years, unless the labour inspectorate has agreed in advance to a longer pattern of six-month contracts up to three years.

Some features that employers elsewhere take for granted do not exist. Trial periods have been void in contracts signed since 1 January 2014. What the law offers instead, for contracts starting from 1 August 2026, is a one-week notice period throughout the first six months of service, which gives both sides a short exit if the match is wrong.

Non-compete clauses depend on salary. At 1 January 2026 a clause is invalid where annual gross pay at the end of the contract is €44,447 or less, and between €44,447 and €88,895 it only works for functions listed in a collective agreement. Separately, the Law of 7 October 2022 requires the essential terms of the job to be set out in writing for the employee, and the contract package is where that happens.

Belgian law has no single statute that hands every employee creation to the employer, so the contract should carry an intellectual property assignment clause and a confidentiality clause. Software is the partial exception, but relying on the default rule for anything else leaves gaps. The EOR builds these clauses into the contract, and you should tell it at this stage what kind of work the person will produce for you.

A candidate holding EU or EEA nationality can start work with no permit at all, so for them this step is a document check. Everyone else needs a single permit (permis unique / gecombineerde vergunning), one application that covers both work and residence, and the start date waits on it.

Two levels of government share the decision. The region where the work takes place rules on the work part: the Departement Werk en Sociale Economie in Flanders, Bruxelles Économie et Emploi in Brussels, or the SPW in Wallonia. The federal Immigration Office (DOFI) rules on residence. In Flanders new applications go through the online Uniek Loket.

Each region sets its own salary floors. Brussels, for example, asks for €3,703.44 gross a month for a highly qualified worker and €4,748.00 for an EU Blue Card. Wallonia’s 2026 thresholds are €53,220 a year for highly qualified staff and €68,815 for the Blue Card, while Flanders uses €48,912 for highly skilled workers aged 30 or over.

The legal employer files the application, which under an EOR means the EOR. No outcome can be promised, and the Flemish government states on its Blue Card page that the card is only available with a Belgian employer, on a contract that either has no end date or covers six months or more. Raise any permit question at step 1, not after the offer has gone out.

Flanders publishes its thresholds as annual figures. Where the package includes a 13th month and double holiday pay, as it does under PC 200, the Flemish authority says to divide the annual figure by 13.92 to get the monthly salary to test. That makes the €48,912 threshold roughly €3,514 a month, a useful number when you are setting an offer for a candidate who will need a permit.

The last week before the start is about registrations that must exist before the employee does any work. The most important is the Dimona, the immediate declaration of employment to the ONSS. It has to be filed before the first hour worked, and a late Dimona is one of the easiest breaches for an inspector to spot.

• Dimona filed with the ONSS, carrying the employee’s national number or other identifier and the start date.
• A copy of the work regulations (règlement de travail / arbeidsreglement) handed to the employee.
• Cover under the employer’s work-accident insurance and registration with the external prevention service.
• Bank details and family situation collected, since household status affects both withholding tax and the special social security contribution.
• A written telework agreement where home working will be structural, with the equipment and costs the employer will bear.

Your side of the checklist is lighter: a laptop or other equipment, access to your systems, and a named person the new employee can turn to on the first morning. A short welcome note explaining who the EOR is, and why its name will appear on the payslip, saves confusion in week one.

If the new employee comes from another Belgian employer, ask them for the holiday certificate their previous employer issued on departure. It shows how much leave and holiday pay has already been paid out for the current year, and the EOR needs it to work out what the employee is still owed. Without it, the first holiday request of the year tends to become a guessing game.

The first payslip follows the same arithmetic as every later one, prorated if the start falls mid-month. The EOR begins with gross salary and works down to net in a fixed order.

• Employee social security. 13.07% of gross comes off first, with no ceiling. On €4,500 a month that is €588.15.
• Withholding tax. The précompte professionnel is calculated on the remainder with the official formula in Annex III to the Royal Decree implementing the Income Tax Code, and depends on family situation.
• Special social security contribution. A further monthly deduction based on quarterly pay and household status, capped at €182.82 a quarter for an individually taxed worker.
• Net pay. What remains is paid to the employee’s account, and the payslip, one of the compulsory Belgian social documents, shows every step.

The employer side runs in parallel. On the same €4,500 salary, the 25.00% employer ONSS rate adds €1,125 for the month, and above roughly €3,820 a month the structural reduction for lower wages no longer applies, so there is nothing to subtract. Insurance and the prevention service add a little more.

Both the employee’s tax and the special contribution are advances. The final figures are settled on the annual tax assessment, which is why the year-end 281.10 form matters to the employee.

For a sense of scale over a full year, our 2026 worked example for a single Brussels resident on €4,500 a month under PC 200 ends at about €38,100 net out of roughly €62,970 gross, or about €3,175 a month averaged over twelve. The special contribution in that example is capped at €731.28 for the year. Sharing figures like these with a candidate before the offer is signed heads off surprises when the first payslip arrives.

The first payslip is not the end of the process; several payments and filings follow on a fixed Belgian calendar. The DmfA goes to the ONSS once a quarter, with the deadline at the close of the month after the quarter ends: the return for July to September 2026 is due on 31 October 2026.

In June, PC 200 staff receive the annual premium, €330.84 in 2026 and prorated for newcomers. May or June also brings double holiday pay, but in the first year it is usually small or nil, because the entitlement is built up by the hire’s working time during the year before. A joiner whose earlier Belgian employer paid them exit holiday pay of 15.34% has already been compensated for that period, and supplementary leave can fill gaps in a first-year leave entitlement.

December brings the 13th month, owed under PC 200 once the employee has six months’ seniority and prorated for those who started during the year. January brings the PC 200 indexation, 2.21% on 1 January 2026, applied to actual salaries as well as the scales.

Public holidays add one more date to watch. Belgium has ten, and a holiday that lands on a usual non-working day is swapped for another day off, with the list of those swaps posted before 15 December of the previous year. In 2026, an employer working Monday to Friday needed two replacement days, for 15 August and 1 November; the list for 2027 has to be posted before 15 December 2026.

For a fuller picture of what the EOR handles across this cycle, see EOR explained for Belgium; for the mechanics of the monthly run, read our guide to Belgian payroll; and if this is your first Belgian employee, the broader first hire in Belgium guide covers recruitment and the offer itself.