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In February 2016, the Belgian Court of Cassation has ruled on whether the National Social Security Office (NSSO) can impose social security contributions to the extra-legal child benefit granted by the employer to his workers. What does the Court clarify to the NSSO?
If you grant extra-legal child benefit to your staff as a supplement to a social security branch, this benefit is not regarded as wages on which social security contributions are due.
The condition to be met is that it must regard a supplement; this means that the amount of the extra-legal child benefit cannot exceed the amount of the legal child benefit.
Through an internal directive, the NSSO has set an upper limit of 50 EUR per child per month for the exemption.
In the given circumstances, the Court rules that the NSSO has added a condition to the exemption, being that the extra-legal child benefit must be granted to all workers with dependent children without any discrimination.
However, the Court reminds the NSSO that the only condition with which the extra-legal child must comply in order to be exempted from social security contributions, is that it must regard a supplement to a social security branch (in this case, child benefit).
Should you, as an employer, wish to subject the extra-legal child benefit to other additional conditions (for example if you only want to grant it to part of your staff, objectively defined), this does not enable the NSSO to reclassify this benefit as wages as to impose the collection of social security contributions.
If you would like more information on this topic, please do not hesitate to contact one of our Legal Partners (Legalpartners@partena.be). However, their intervention will generally be invoiced.
Sources: Judgement of the Court of Cassation of 15 February 2016, S.14.0071.F; Article 2 of the Act of 12 April 1965 on the protection of the workers' wages, Belgian Official Gazette 30/04/1965.
Refer to the related judgement of the Labour Court of Liège which rejects this internal directive.
Author: Anne Ghysels
18/05/2016
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