Take-home pay in Belgium
Net in your account
€2,792a month
€33,508 a year
from €50,000 gross
What happens to your €50,000?
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Full calculation and sources
- Gross salary€50,000
Tax & contributions− €9,957
- After tax & contributions€40,043
Mandatory pension− €6,535
- Net in your account€33,508
The answer rests on
Your assumptions
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What this calculator measures
The figure is the annual gross you enter, less the employee social security contribution (ONSS / RSZ) and less the federal income tax on the year's assessment, the impôt des personnes physiques / personenbelasting. The tax is charged on gross less that contribution and the standard professional expenses, at the four federal rates, and reduced by the tax on the tax-free allowance. It is the assessment, not the monthly withholding your payslip shows, and it is federal only: your commune adds a surcharge on top, so your real tax is higher. It assumes a single private-sector employee resident in Belgium for the whole year.
What you receive now, and what accrues
The social security contribution funds Belgian social security as a whole, the state pension among it, but it does not build a pot in your name, so it appears as a deduction. Nothing accrues in this calculation: a supplementary pension through your employer's group insurance is not modelled.
What this result assumes
- Single, no children
- Resident in Belgium for the whole year
- Private-sector employee
- The annual assessment (impôt des personnes physiques), not the monthly withholding — your payslip shows a different figure, because the two are indexed differently by law
- Federal tax only. Regional adjustments are not included
- Your commune's surcharge on the tax is NOT included, so your real tax is higher — communes charge up to about a tenth of the tax and Belgium does not publish the rates in a form we can read
- The figure entered is the annual total, including a thirteenth month and holiday pay
What this model does not cover (9)
- EVERYTHING that matters about correctness. There is no official case. The arithmetic is assembled from sourced parameters and checked only against itself and against hand-computed cases in this repository.
- The communal surcharge (aanvullende gemeentebelasting / taxe communale additionnelle). Nothing to nine and a half percent of the tax, set per commune, and not modelled because no fetchable Belgian source publishes it. A Belgian result here understates the tax by roughly that much.
- The special social security contribution (cotisation speciale de securite sociale). A separate banded annual charge, neither income tax nor ordinary social security, reaching 182,82 EUR a quarter. The ONSS publishes its bands as prose with two interleaved scales - one for individually taxed contributors and one for joint assessments - and attributing them from scraped text risked charging the wrong scale, so it is declared instead.
- The social bonus a l'emploi, which reduces the 13,07 % at low pay. It applies only below a monthly reference salary of about 2.013,64 EUR and its formula is per-day and per-category. Below roughly 24.000 EUR of annual gross this spec overstates the contribution.
- The fiscal work bonus, CIR 92 art. 289ter/1, a credit of at most 2.000 EUR. It exists to offset the social bonus above and is conditional on having received it, so it is left out for the same reason and in the same salary range.
- The thirteenth month and holiday pay, which are near-universal in Belgium and taxed at their own withholding rates. The figure entered is the annual total, as for Italy, Spain and Portugal.
- Regional competences on personal income tax. None modelled.
- Any household but a single person. Belgian joint assessment, the marital quotient and children all change the answer materially and all return a typed unsupported.
- Any annual rounding rule. Every line is rounded to the eurocent by this spec's own choice.
Sources for Belgium
The rules this page is built from, at the bodies that set them. Every figure in the breakdown above also opens its own source.
How this is worked out
Has this been checked against an official calculator?
No. Every rate and amount comes from the body that sets it: the Moniteur belge for the tax rates and the indexed amounts, and the ONSS for the contribution. But Belgium's own tax simulator requires a government login, and no official case has been checked against the result. The page says so beside the figure, and Belgium is the one country here with no external check at all.
Why is the tax on my payslip different?
Your payslip shows the monthly withholding, the précompte professionnel / bedrijfsvoorheffing, which has its own scale and is indexed differently by law. This page shows the year's assessment. The difference is settled when your tax return is assessed.
Does this include my commune's tax?
No. Every commune adds a surcharge on the federal tax, and Belgium does not publish the rates in a form this site can read. Your real tax is higher by that surcharge, which is why the result is marked as an estimate.
Should I enter twelve times my monthly salary?
No. Belgian salaries are usually quoted monthly, with a thirteenth month and holiday pay on top. Enter the annual total, including both.
Is the monthly figure a payslip prediction?
It is one twelfth of the annual net amount. Actual monthly payroll can vary with holiday allowance, bonuses and withholding rounding.
Does the city change the tax?
It depends on the country. Where a region, canton or municipality sets part of the income tax, the place you choose changes the result, and the picker offers those places for that reason. Where income tax is set nationally, the city makes no difference to the payroll figure.
Can I use this for self-employment or part-year residence?
Those cases are not modelled. The answer assumes an employee resident for the whole year, and each country's page lists the rest of what it assumes.
Found something wrong?
Tell us which number and we will check it against the source.