---
title: "Belgian Independent Contractor Guidance "
slug: "belgian-independent-contractor-guidance"
tags: ["Compliance"]
updated: 2022-07-26T12:15:18Z
published: 2022-07-26T12:15:18Z
canonical: "resourceportal.antientropy.org/belgian-independent-contractor-guidance"
excludeFromExternalSearch: true
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://resourceportal.antientropy.org/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Belgian Independent Contractor Guidance 

### Who is this article for?

          

**Employers and Contractors** engaging in independent contractors (Personal Assistants, Virtual Assistants, Contract Workers, Temporary Hires) in Belgium.

You may also want to review [independent contractor guidance](/v1/docs/independent-contractor-guidance).

#### Before hiring an Independent Contractor, you need to ask yourself:

1. What are your employment needs?
2. How many hours do you need (each week / each month)?
3. How long do you need the worker? Temporary or Indefinitely?
4. Will the demand for work grow as your company grows?
5. Do you need them on-site, remote, or hybrid?

## Belgian Independent Contractor and Labor Law

The contractor/employee law is primarily governed by The Employment Relations Act (also known as The Act on Labour Relations).

The Act uses the four general measures:

- The parties’ intentions as expressed in the agreement:
  - the agreement must be in line with the nature of the employment relationship, meaning the agreement matches the reality.
  - the true will of the parties based on both the written agreement and the actual situation;
- The worker’s freedom to organize their own working time:
  - The relationship must not include the impossibility of freely organizing working time or the obligation to strictly follow working days, including performing a given number of hours and reporting any absences;
  - The worker must be able to
    - freely choose their work assignments and working hours;
    - have the freedom to schedule and account for holidays and vacation days;
    - have control over the use of their time;
- The worker’s freedom to organize their work:
  - whether the individual can freely choose (and refuse) assignments;
  - the imposition of rules of conduct or objectives;
  - the worker must not be required to execute strict directions regarding specific tasks
- The ability to exercise hierarchical control:
  - the organization can not impose employee-type penalties on the contractor;
  - there may not be an established means of control;
  - the nature of reporting may not be overly strict;

In deciding the nature of the relationship, the government may also use neutral criteria such as the title of the contract, registration with a social security office, how the contractor and organization are registered (including VAT), and how revenue is reported to the tax authorities.

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## Appendix

In a [Labor Code Act in 2012](https://www.ilo.org/dyn/travail/docs/2557/Labour%20Code.pdf), the Government additionally introduced a refutable presumption of the existence of an employment agreement if, based on the contractual relationship, more than half of the following criteria are fulfilled:

- Absence of any financial or economic risk for the worker, such as the absence of personal and substantial investment with their resources or absence of a personal and substantial part in the profits or losses of the undertaking;
- Absence of liability and decision-making power in respect of the financial resources of the organization;
- Absence of influence on the purchase policy of the organization;
- Absence of the power of the decision of the price policy, unless prices are fixed by law;
- Absence of commitment in respect of the result of the agreed work;
- Guaranteed payment of a fixed compensation without regard to the result of the undertaking or the volume of the work performed;
- Absence of possibility to hire personnel to carry out the agreed work or to be replaced;
- Not acting as an undertaking towards other individuals or mainly working for the same contractual partner;
- Working in spaces in which one is not the owner or tenant, or working with materials provided, financed, or secured by the contractual partner.

## Related

- [Employer Independent Contractor Guidance (UK)](/employer-independent-contractor-guidance-uk.md)