What is the difference between gross and net salary?
Gross salary is the amount written in your employment contract, before anything is taken off. Net salary is what actually reaches your bank account. In Belgium the distance between the two is wide, and it widens as pay rises.
Job offers are made in gross. Life is lived in net. That mismatch is why a first Belgian payslip surprises almost everyone.
What is deducted between gross and net in Belgium?
Two things, in order. First the employee social security contribution, which funds healthcare, pensions and unemployment insurance, taken from the gross amount. Then withholding tax on what remains, applied progressively, so each additional slice of salary is taxed more heavily than the one below it.
Your personal situation then adjusts the result. Dependants and household circumstances change the withholding, which is why two colleagues on identical gross salaries can take home different amounts.
Why is your gross salary not what you cost your employer?
Because there is a third number, and it is the one nobody quotes in an interview. On top of your gross salary the employer pays its own social security contributions, so the total cost of employing you sits well above your gross, which in turn sits well above your net.
Knowing there are three numbers rather than two changes how a negotiation reads. When an employer says the budget is exhausted, the constraint being described is the top number, not the one on your contract.
What sits outside the gross-to-net calculation?
A significant part of Belgian pay never passes through it. Meal vouchers, eco-vouchers, a company car and mobility budget, group and hospitalisation insurance, and the two routes described under warrants and the CCT 90 bonus are all delivered outside gross salary. That is precisely why Belgian packages are built around extra-legal benefits.
It also means comparing two offers on gross alone is unreliable. There is a fuller picture of what Belgian candidates actually weigh beyond salary, and if you are comparing employment against freelancing, day rate is the other unit to understand. You can see how each of the roles currently open is structured.
