What if the employer provides his homeworkers with office furniture or IT equipment?

In the context of homeworking, an employer may make office furniture and/or IT equipment available to his employees. How should this be treated for tax purposes? A recent circular on employers' compensations for homework clarifies the situation.

Homework

The circular deals with the consequences for employees in terms of income tax in the context of homeworking, particularly when office furniture and/or IT equipment are made available by the employer. Since the equipment is provided by the employer, the employee is not the owner or holder of this equipment.

Homework is understood to mean any form of organisation and/or performance of work in which work, that could also be carried out in the employer's workplace, is regularly carried out outside that workplace.

The notion of 'workplace' is to be understood in a broad sense, encompassing the activities of employees that are normally carried out at the customer's premises or at another location (e.g. at a satellite office of the employer, i.e. a decentralised room of the employer or a room that the employer puts at the disposal of the employee).

Homework must therefore be carried out in the employee's private premises.

Also, homework must be organized in the context of normal working days. The circular therefore does not regulate the issue of employees working at home outside normal working hours (e.g. in the evening or at the weekend).

What furniture? What equipment?

The tax authority accepts that the provision of certain goods which are necessary for the normal performance of the occupational activity at home does not give rise to the taxation of a benefit of any kind.

More specifically, it concerns, restrictively, the following elements:

• an office chair;
• an office table;
• an office cupboard;
• a functional desk lamp;
• a second computer screen;
• a printer/scanner;
• a keyboard;
• a computer mouse, foot mouse, trackpad or trackball;
• a telephone headset;
• specific equipment that people with disabilities need to be able to work easily with a PC.

The provision of goods that unreasonably exceed the requirements for homework (for example, an expensive design office desk, etc.) gives rise to a taxable benefit of any kind.

This can be assessed by comparing the goods made available with the office furniture and/or IT equipment that the employer normally makes available in the workplace.

An ergonomic office chair, office table, mouse, trackpad or trackball may for example qualify if the employer makes this type of office furniture/IT equipment available under normal circumstances at the workplace.

What if the employee keeps the goods?

If the employee is allowed to keep the goods made available to him after the termination of his occupational activity or homeworking, the actual residual value of the investment at that time should be taxed as a benefit of any kind. This amount can be reduced by the employee's personal contribution to the benefit.

Can the provision of office furniture/IT equipment be combined with the flat-rate office allowance?

Making available the above-restricted enumeration of goods does not affect the amount of the flat-rate allowance for office expenses (see our infoflash of March 4, 2021). This is intended to reimburse other costs.

Beware of the private use of IT equipment!

The use for personal purposes of a PC, a tablet, an Internet connection, a mobile phone or a fixed or mobile telephone subscription that is made available free of charge shall remain subject to the applicable legal and regulatory provisions regarding the determination of a benefit of any kind. The private use of this equipment therefore generates a taxable benefit.

And in terms of social security?

The NSSO has decided to follow the tax circular for the qualification of making available equipment in the framework of homeworking.

Entry into force

The circular entered into force on 1 March 2021, but the tax authority will take into account the principles contained therein for homework situations that have occurred since 1 January 2020.

The circular does not affect the rulings in force.

If you have any legal questions about employers’ compensations for homework or their application, be sure to contact our legal consultants at legalpartners@partena.be.

Sources: Circular 2021/C/20 on employers' compensations for homework, https://eservices.minfin.fgov.be/myminfin-web/pages/fisconet#!/document/c4b263eb-091c-4a11-8ad0-24e2b11bb7db ,26 February 2021; Instructions from the NSSO (4 March 2021): https://www.socialsecurity.be/employer/instructions/dmfa/fr/latest/intermediates