Going Freelance in Belgium: 6 Financial Realities I Learned The Hard Way
It’s been a while since I started freelancing, but it took me quite some free time (get it? 😉 ) to finally get around to sharing my journey so far. August 2022 is when I made the jump into going freelance in Belgium, which means I’m almost four years in at this point. I’m at a different client now but with the same setup (company, 1-client freelancer), and still zero regrets.
When I told colleagues back in 2022 that I was going freelance, most of them just said something like “oh nice, I’ve been thinking about that too.” And honestly, who can blame them? In IT it just makes sense to at least consider it. The rates are good, the work is there, and at some point you start wondering how much of your salary you’re actually keeping versus giving away.
But was I fully prepared for what was coming financially? Not entirely. Here’s the honest version of what changed.
1. Going Freelance in Belgium Means Facing Your Social Contributions Head On
As an employee, social contributions basically don’t exist in your world. They’re taken before you ever see your payslip. Out of sight, out of mind.
As a freelancer in Belgium, they become very much in sight. You pay them every quarter through your social insurance fund, and in your first year the amounts are based on a provisional minimum. Around €900 per quarter to start, give or take. Sounds fine, right?
Here’s the thing: those provisional amounts are just estimates. A few years later, once the government knows what you actually earned, they do a recalculation. And if you were billing decent IT rates (which you probably were), that recalculation can come with a pretty hefty extra bill on top.
What I’d tell anyone starting out: don’t assume the minimum quarterly payment is what you actually owe. Set aside around 20% of your gross revenue from day one and keep it in a separate account. Just leave it there. You’ll thank yourself later. You can find the official rates and calculation rules on the RSVZ/INASTI website.
2. Sick Pay: Fine Print You Hope You Never Need
In Belgium, if you get sick as an employee, your employer pays 100% of your salary for the first month. After that, your mutualiteit (health insurance fund) steps in. Not perfect, but pretty solid.
As a freelancer, it works differently. Your mutualiteit does cover you, but only after a waiting period of about 30 days. That first month? Basically unpaid. And when the payments do kick in, they’re a flat daily rate. Somewhere around €65 to €75 per day in 2025. Compared to a typical IT day rate, let’s just say it’s a significant step down. The RIZIV overview of self-employed sickness benefits has the full breakdown if you want to dig into it.
This is one of the first things I sorted out before I even started billing. A lot of freelancers in Belgium take out income protection insurance (called gewaarborgd inkomen) to cover that gap. It costs money every month, but one bad month of illness without it will cost you more than years of premiums. I’d rather pay for protection I never use than need it and not have it.
3. Taxes: Suddenly You Have to Think About This Yourself
As an employee, taxes are handled for you. Money comes in, tax goes out, you see the rest. Simple.
As a freelancer with your own BV (limited company), you’re the one managing it. Belgium has a system of quarterly advance tax payments, called voorafbetalingen, due in April, July, October, and December. You don’t have to pay them, but if you don’t, you get hit with a surcharge on your tax bill. It’s not massive, but it’s money you could easily avoid losing.
The bigger shift is getting used to the cash flow. You earn now, you get taxed later, but you need to be setting money aside constantly in between. If you’re not used to that, it can feel a bit chaotic at first.
Honestly, this is why I hired an accountant before I sent my first invoice. Yes, it’s an extra cost. But in the first year alone, having someone who knows the Belgian freelance tax system properly more than paid for itself. I’d recommend it to anyone going freelance in Belgium, at least for the first year or two while you’re getting your bearings.
4. The Perks You Forgot You Even Had
This one is easy to miss when you’re doing the “freelance rate vs. employee salary” comparison. You look at the day rate, you look at your old monthly gross, you do the math and think: yeah, this works.
What you might not factor in is all the stuff your employer was quietly paying for.
When I left, the things I noticed most were the group insurance and the hospitalisation cover. A decent groepsverzekering builds up pension savings for you with employer contributions. Basically free money. Hospitalisation insurance through a company plan is also much cheaper than going individual. Both disappeared overnight when I went freelance. In my case I have the luck of being able to join my wife’s employer’s insurance for free.
On top of that, there were a bunch of smaller things: extra holidays above the legal minimum, discounts on banking products, a higher child allowance on top of the standard child allowance, extra discounts at various retailers, events, etc. (I used a lot mind you). None of them huge on their own, but together they add up to a few thousand euros a year that your day rate now needs to cover before you’re actually better off.
The good news is that through your BV you can rebuild most of this. You can get hospitalisation cover as a company expense, set up pension savings properly, structure things efficiently. But it won’t happen on its own. You have to actively go and sort it out. Put it on your list for the first few months.
5. Pension: The One That Actually Works Out for FIRE People
Belgian independents historically get a lower state pension than employees. The contribution rates were lower for a long time and the system reflects that.
For most people, that’s a concern. For someone aiming at FIRE, it’s kind of beside the point. I’m not building a plan around a state pension at 67, so the gap doesn’t stress me out.
What does interest me is the VAPZ. It’s basically a pension savings product specifically for freelancers, but the reason it’s worth using isn’t really about the pension itself. It’s about the tax efficiency. Your contributions are deductible as a business cost, they lower your taxable income, and they also reduce your social contribution base. So you save in two places at once. The FSMA has a clear explainer on VAPZ if you want the official version.
If you run a BV, there’s also the IPT (Individuele Pensioentoezegging), which lets your company build up pension capital for you before it ever reaches your personal income tax. For a FIRE strategy, I treat both of these less as retirement accounts and more as tax-efficient places to park money I’ll hopefully get to use a lot sooner than 67.
6. Salary: You Decide How Much You Pay Yourself
This is the upside people talk about, and it’s real.
With a BV, you decide how much salary to take from your company and when. The profit that stays inside the company gets taxed at the corporate rate: 20% on the first €100,000. Compare that to personal income tax, which can hit 50% at the top end in Belgium. The difference adds up fast.
In practice, a lot of freelancers pay themselves a modest salary, enough to cover living costs and keep their social rights ticking, and leave the rest in the company to grow. Eventually you can pull it out more efficiently through dividends or other routes, but you’re not forced to take everything out now and hand half of it to the tax man.
For FIRE specifically, this kind of control is genuinely useful. You can manage how much taxable income you declare each year depending on your situation. As an employee, your payslip is your payslip. Here, there’s actual room to plan around it.
Would I Do It Again?
Yes. Absolutely.
Going freelance in Belgium was one of the best financial decisions I’ve made, but I’d do one thing differently: go in a bit more prepared on the financial side rather than just being excited about the rate increase. The social contributions, the sick pay gap, the benefits you lose and need to rebuild. None of it is a dealbreaker, but none of it is free either. You swap the comfort of having an employer handle things for the freedom of handling them yourself.
If you go in knowing that, it’s a great deal. If you go in blind, the first regularisation bill from your social fund can feel like a nasty surprise.
Four years in, still at it. Still happy I did it.
Thinking about making the switch? Or already freelance and wish someone had told you some of this earlier? Let me know in the comments. Always happy to talk through it. And if you’re wondering how going freelance in Belgium fits into a bigger FIRE plan with a family, I wrote about exactly that over here.