US company hiring in Belgium: routes, costs and pay rules for 2026

A US company hiring in Belgium usually trips over the same three assumptions, and each one changes the budget or the contract. Spotting them before the offer goes out saves a renegotiation later.

• Contracts do not end at will. Every indefinite contract ends with notice or a payment in lieu, on a statutory scale that grows with seniority. For contracts starting from 1 August 2026, an employer dismissal in the first six months needs one week’s notice; after that the periods climb to 15 weeks at four years’ service and keep rising.
• Salary arrives in more than twelve pieces. A white-collar employee on a monthly salary also receives a 13th month (end-of-year bonus) and double holiday pay worth 92% of a month. In practice the annual cost is about 13.92 times the monthly figure before employer contributions.
• Social security has no wage cap. The employer’s ONSS (RSZ) contribution is 25.00% of gross pay in 2026, and it applies to the whole salary. A senior hire does not age out of contributions halfway through the year.

None of these is unusual inside Belgium. They only feel unusual from a payroll system built around biweekly pay, a single annual bonus and a contribution base that stops at a set wage. Get your finance and legal leads to read this list before they read the candidate’s CV.

Headcount plans and time pressure decide between three realistic routes for that first hire. Each carries different paperwork and a different exit.

Your own company. A Belgian SRL (BV in Dutch) has no minimum capital, but the founders must provide sufficient starting equity and a financial plan, and the articles are passed before a notary and published in the Belgian Official Gazette. Next, the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (BCE / KBO) records the company; the beneficial owners go in the UBO register, and it files annual accounts with the National Bank, corporate tax returns and VAT returns. Only after that does the employer side start: ONSS registration, work regulations, a joint committee check and payroll.

Registering directly as a foreign employer. A company with no Belgian establishment can identify with the ONSS, obtain an employer number and run Belgian payroll through a social secretariat. This avoids forming a company, but it leaves you as the employer for every Belgian obligation, and the withholding tax and permanent establishment questions need proper tax advice before you rely on it.

An employer of record. We become the Belgian employer of the person you choose and take over salary payments, the Dimona, the quarterly DmfA and withholding tax; your managers direct the work and own the relationship with the team. Our fee for this route opens at €599 per employee per month. For a team of one to five people this is usually the quickest to set up and the simplest to unwind, and our guide to choosing an EOR for Belgium lists what to ask any provider, including us.

Start from the full-year cost in euros and convert once, at a dated rate, rather than converting the monthly salary and multiplying. The worked example we use across this site is a white-collar hire in Brussels on €4,500 gross a month under PC 200, single, in service all year.

• About €62,970 gross for 2026 across fifteen payments: twelve salaries, two bonuses and the June premium.
• Total employer cost before any EOR fee: about €78,400, roughly 24.5% above total gross.
• Net pay to the employee: about €38,100 for the year.

Converted at 1.1225 dollars per euro (the ECB figure for 2 October 2026), the employer cost of about €78,400 is roughly $88,000. Twelve months of an EOR fee from €599 adds €7,188, which brings the example to about €85,590, or around $96,070 at the same rate. Our fee of €599 is $672.38 at that rate.

Two cautions before that figure goes into a board deck. Exchange rates move, so date every conversion and leave headroom. And the example excludes meal vouchers, company cars, group insurance and commuting costs, which many Belgian packages include. For a line-by-line comparison with FICA and FUTA, read US and Belgian employer costs side by side.

Belgian white-collar pay follows a calendar that a US payroll team will not have seen, and cash planning should follow it. Salaries are paid monthly, but two months carry much more than one salary.

In June, most employees under PC 200 receive double holiday pay, worth 92% of one month’s salary once a whole year of prior work stands behind it, and the PC 200 annual premium, which is €330.84 in 2026. In December the 13th month is paid, provided the employee has six months’ seniority at that point; starters receive a pro rata amount. In the worked example, June gross pay is about €8,970 rather than €4,500.

January brings automatic indexation. Under PC 200, minimum scales and actual salaries rose by 2.21% on 1 January 2026, and the employer has no choice about applying it. Starting with the January 2027 indexation, full-time pay beyond €4,000 a month is indexed only after a 2% moderation, with a temporary ONSS contribution due from the employer instead, so a salary review in a US cycle should allow for both.

Optional extras follow their own rules. Take meal vouchers: on a €10 voucher, a split of up to €8.91 from the employer and at least €1.09 from the employee keeps it outside both tax and ONSS. Decide early whether your package will include them, since they are hard to take away later.

A US citizen who will live and work in Belgium has to obtain a single permit, a combined authorisation for work and residence. Two authorities are involved: residence is a matter for the federal Immigration Office (DOFI / DVZ), while the work element is decided by the regional government where the job is based.

Salary thresholds for the permit differ from one region to the next. In Brussels, the highly qualified threshold is €3,703.44 gross a month and the EU Blue Card threshold is €4,748.00, figures Brussels has kept from 2025 while it waits for new statistics; check the salary thresholds published by Brussels Economy and Employment before you fix an offer. From 1 January 2026, the Walloon threshold for a highly qualified worker is €53,220 a year, and Flanders uses €48,912 for those aged 30 and over.

The applicant for a single permit is the Belgian legal employer, and no arrangement, ours included, can promise that a region will grant one. Build permit time into the start date, and treat any timeline you are given as an estimate until the decision arrives.

Senior relocations also raise tax questions. Belgium’s special regime for inbound taxpayers was revised with effect from 2025, and our guide to the expat tax regime after 2025 explains the current 35% allowance and €70,000 threshold.

Most of the daily friction comes from working-time and leave rules that a manager in Austin or Boston has never had to think about. They are easy to respect once someone has written them down for the team.

• Full-time under PC 200 means 38 hours a week on average over the year, inside the ordinary daily ceiling of 8 hours and weekly ceiling of 40. Late calls that become a routine count towards those hours.
• Annual leave is 20 days in a five-day week, but the entitlement reflects the year before the current one. A new starter may not have a full entitlement in year one, although supplementary leave can fill the gap.
• There are 10 public holidays, including 21 July, the national day. When one falls on a weekend, the employer must name a replacement working day off, and the notice for the next year has to be posted before 15 December.
• Sick employees on an indefinite contract keep full salary for the first 30 days of incapacity, paid by the employer, before sickness insurance takes over.
• Structural home working is common. Under collective agreement no. 85 it needs a written agreement, and a tax-free home-office allowance of up to €164.21 a month applies from 1 September 2026.

Put these rules in the onboarding pack for US managers as well as in the employee handbook. The awkward conversations, about a missed replacement day or a weekend deployment, nearly always start with a manager who did not know the rule existed.

A short checklist keeps the first Belgian hire on track, whichever route you choose. Check which joint committee the role falls under and the minimum pay it sets, decide on extras such as meal vouchers, budget the 13.92 salary instalments plus 25% employer contributions, and agree how a future exit would be handled under the notice scale.

If the plan is a handful of hires rather than a full subsidiary, Employer of Record Belgium can employ them on Belgian contracts while you test the market. The termination rules are the part US teams most often underestimate, so read how Belgian dismissal compares with at-will employment before you sign off the headcount plan.

Think about the second and third hire at the same time. If you expect to reach ten or more people within two years, the comparison with forming an SRL changes, because the fixed costs of a company spread over more salaries. If the Belgian team may stay at two or three for a long time, the extra layer of a company, with its notary deed, accounts and returns, rarely pays for itself. There is no single crossover number; it depends on how long you plan to stay and how much administrative work you want to carry in-house.

Write down who on your side owns each decision: pay reviews, leave approvals, home-working agreements and performance conversations. We hold the Belgian employer duties, but the people who manage the work day to day still need to know where those duties start.