What are warrants?
Warrants are options on the shares of a fund, granted to an employee as a form of bonus. They are taxed as professional income at the moment of grant, on a valuation of the option rather than on what you eventually receive, and they are exempt from social security contributions on both the employee and the employer side.
That exemption is the whole point: for the same employer cost, a bonus in warrants reaches the employee with less taken off than a cash bonus would.
One condition governs everything else. Warrants cannot replace remuneration that is already effectively due. A bonus you have already earned in cash cannot be converted, which means the plan has to be in place before the entitlement crystallises.
What is a CCT 90 bonus?
The CCT 90 bonus, formally a non-recurring result-linked benefit, is a collective bonus tied to objectives fixed in advance. The objectives have to be collective, objectively measurable and verifiable, they cannot depend on individual performance, and the plan has to be filed before the reference period begins.
Its treatment is specific rather than simply favourable. Within a ceiling it escapes ordinary income tax, but the employee still pays a solidarity contribution of 13.07% and the employer owes a special contribution of 33%, as the SPF Emploi guidance on non-recurring result-linked benefits sets out. Above the ceiling, ordinary social security contributions apply to the excess.
How do warrants and a CCT 90 bonus differ?
On who can receive them and on what triggers them. Warrants can be granted individually and discretionarily, to one person, for any reason. A CCT 90 bonus must be collective and must depend on pre-defined measurable objectives, so it cannot be used to reward one individual.
They are also limited differently. The CCT 90 bonus stops being favourably treated above its ceiling, while warrants have no equivalent cap but remain taxable as income, which CCT 90 largely avoids. In practice employers often run both, using CCT 90 for collective results and warrants for individual recognition.
What should you check before accepting a bonus in warrants?
Three things, and none of them is the one people usually worry about. Warrants are options, so in principle their value can move between grant and sale. In practice plans are built so they can be sold almost immediately after grant, which keeps that exposure short, so the question to ask is when your plan lets you sell rather than whether you are carrying market risk for months.
Then check that the amount was not already owed to you, because warrants cannot replace remuneration already due. And check what the same amount would have been in cash, since a warrant plan is not automatically more generous, only more efficiently structured. See extra-legal benefits for how variable pay sits in a package and gross vs net salary for why the structuring matters, then compare the roles currently open.
