What is a freelancer?
A freelancer is a professional who takes on assignments for clients and invoices the work, instead of being on a payroll. In IT, engineering and business consulting, the assignment is usually a mission of a few months, on site or remote, paid at a day rate.
The word describes a way of working on the market. It says who organises the work (largely you), how you are paid (per day or per deliverable) and who carries the risk of the gaps between missions (also you).
Is freelancer a legal status in Belgium?
No. Belgian social security knows employees, civil servants and the self-employed, and freelancer is not one of them. In practice, a freelancer working in their own name is legally self-employed: the INASTI defines a self-employed worker as a natural person who carries out a professional activity in Belgium without being bound by an employment contract or a civil service statute.
Many IT freelancers work through their own company instead. The company invoices the client, and its paid director is presumed self-employed. A third route, the umbrella company, lets someone take freelance missions while being employed. The practical steps are set out in the Sparagus wiki on how to become self-employed in Belgium.
How is a freelancer different from a self-employed person?
By the question each word answers. Freelancer answers how you work: on missions, for clients, at a rate. Self-employed answers how you are covered: which social security scheme you pay into, and which obligations follow, from affiliation to a social insurance fund to registration in the enterprise register.
So every freelancer working in their own name is self-employed, but not every self-employed person is a freelancer. A shopkeeper, a physiotherapist or a plumber is self-employed without being a freelancer in the sense the IT market uses.
What does freelancing change compared with a job?
The contract stops being an employment contract. There is no notice period in the employment-law sense, no paid leave and no employer building a pension for you. What replaces them is the agreement with the client or the intermediary: its duration, its termination clause and its rate.
It also changes what you have to check. A mission organised exactly like a job, with fixed hours, a manager's instructions and no freedom over how the work is done, can be requalified as employment. Freelance missions are listed next to permanent roles among the roles Sparagus is currently recruiting for.
