The director's minimum remuneration for assessment year 2027 is EUR 51,000 — not the EUR 50,000 in circulation

The applicable amount for assessment year 2027 is EUR 51,000. Nearly every advisory note in circulation says EUR 50,000, and the gap is one indexation coefficient read from the wrong year.

What the law replaced

The Law of 15 July 2026 reforming personal income tax — Belgian Official Gazette of 29 July 2026, first edition, numac 2026005724, p. 40196 — rewrote the minimum-remuneration condition in art. 215, third paragraph, 4° WIB 92.

• Before: a fixed EUR 45,000, written into the text and unmoved by the index.
• After: a base amount of EUR 25,000, which is not itself the applicable figure. It is indexed annually under art. 178, §3, first paragraph, 2° WIB 92 and rounded to the nearest EUR 1,000.

Art. 88 of the law settles the timing: the title enters into force on the day of publication and applies from assessment year 2027. As of 23 August 2026 there is no postponement, no amending law and no repair law on the register.

Where EUR 51,000 comes from — and where EUR 50,000 came from

The explanatory memorandum ran the arithmetic with the assessment year 2026 coefficient, 2.0096. Twenty-five thousand multiplied by that coefficient rounds to EUR 50,000, and that figure travelled through the advisory press before the indexation notice existed.

The notice settles it. Bericht in verband met de automatische indexering inzake inkomstenbelastingen — Aanslagjaar 2027, FPS Finance, Belgian Official Gazette of 12 August 2026, numac 2026006085. Table III.B reads, in the original: Art. 215, 3de lid, 4° — Minimale bezoldiging toe te kennen ten laste van het resultaat van het belastbaar tijdperk — basisbedrag 25.000 — geïndexeerd bedrag Aj. 2027: 51.000.

The coefficient for assessment year 2027 is 2.0592. Rounded to the nearest EUR 1,000, the applicable amount is EUR 51,000.

Two consequences for how you use secondary sources on this point:

• Agreement is not corroboration here. Sources converging on EUR 50,000 either predate the 12 August notice or ignore it. They agree with each other, not with the table. A client who checks the Official Gazette will find the discrepancy in about a minute, and the discrepancy runs in the direction that costs them the reduced rate.
• EUR 51,000 is the assessment year 2027 amount and nothing more. Assessment year 2028 gets its own coefficient and its own rounded figure. Do not write EUR 51,000 into an engagement letter, a standing remuneration policy or a template as though it were the new permanent threshold. Write the mechanism — base amount, indexed, rounded — and re-read the notice each year.

Which financial year you are actually testing

Assessment year 2027 does not mean 31 December 2026 for everybody. It covers the financial year closing on 31 December 2026 and every financial year closing on another date during 2027.

A blanket "four months left" framing is correct only for calendar-year clients. A company closing 30 June 2027 is tested over 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027 and still has most of its window — but it also has a period that already started, so the remuneration granted since 1 July 2026 counts and the arithmetic has to begin from that date, not from January.

The excessive-benefits ground is a second, independent test

This is where the circulating summaries go wrong, and it matters more than the EUR 1,000.

New art. 2, §1, 25° WIB 92 defines the bovenmatig deel — the excessive part — of the remuneration. It covers benefits valued at a flat statutory amount, that is, under art. 36, §1, second paragraph or art. 36, §2 WIB 92, or under art. 43, §3 to §8 of the Law of 26 March 1999, exceeding 20 % of the total remuneration granted to all directors during the taxable period.

Read that definition against what is usually said about it:

• It is not a cap of 20 % on the EUR 51,000. The shorthand "at most EUR 10,000 of the EUR 51,000 may consist of benefits" is a simplification the statutory text does not support.
• The denominator is total remuneration granted to all directors in the taxable period, not the minimum, and not one director's package taken alone. A company with several directors computes one ratio over the whole set.
• Benefits valued at their real value are outside the count. Only the flat-rate valued ones enter the numerator.
• Granting an excessive part is a separate and independent ground of exclusion from the reduced rate, restored at art. 215, third paragraph, 5° WIB 92. A company can meet the EUR 51,000 in full and still lose the rate on this ground alone.

Two numbers in this reform are both 20, and they are unrelated:

On the sanction side, be precise with clients: the consequence for the company is loss of the reduced rate. There is no 7.5 % separate assessment for directors. That separate assessment exists under new art. 219septies WIB 92 for employees, and a parallel provision applies to bodies within the legal-entities tax. Importing it into a director's file is a straightforward error, and an expensive one to walk back after the client has already restructured a package on your advice.

The carve-outs that survived the rewrite

• Young companies. No minimum remuneration applies for the first four taxable periods after incorporation. The condition bites from the fifth. Date the incorporation from the file, not from memory — the fifth period arrives quietly.
• Recognised cooperatives. Erkende coöperatieve vennootschappen within the meaning of art. 8:4 WVV remain excluded from the condition.
• The income fallback. If the remuneration granted is below the threshold, the reduced rate still applies as long as the company's taxable income for the period does not exceed that remuneration. In a thin year this is often the cheaper route, and it is the test to run before you recommend a top-up rather than after.

The client-file work order

1. Segment by closing date, not by calendar. Pull every company whose financial year falls in assessment year 2027 and sort by closing date. That sort is the work queue.
2. Sum what has actually been granted to the director during that period: cash remuneration plus benefits at their tax value. Granted, not merely booked as an intention.
3. Compare to EUR 51,000. The shortfall is the amount that has to be granted before the period closes.
4. Compute the benefits ratio separately. Flat-rate valued benefits over total remuneration granted to all directors in the period. Flag anything approaching 20 %, and flag it even where the EUR 51,000 test passes comfortably.
5. Run the fallback before the top-up. If projected taxable income will not exceed the remuneration already granted, the reduced rate survives without a euro of extra salary. Establish that first.
6. Price the top-up before you promise it. A EUR 6,000 increase drags roughly 20.5 % in social contributions behind it, plus the social insurance fund's management fee. The regularisation does not land until 2028, so the year in which the cash leaves the company and the year in which the contribution is finally settled are not the same year. Say that out loud to the client; it is the part they discover late.
7. Compare the two costs, in writing. Top-up cost, contributions and personal income tax against the cost of the whole result being taxed at the standard rate. For some files the reduced rate is not worth buying, and that conclusion belongs in the file.

The profile that used to pass and now fails

The management company with a large benefits package and a small cash salary. It cleared the old fixed EUR 45,000 by counting benefits at their flat statutory value, and nothing in the old test asked what proportion of the package those benefits represented.

It can now fail twice over: once on the amount, because EUR 51,000 sits EUR 6,000 above the figure the package was built around, and once on the ratio, because a company car, free housing and free heating valued at flat statutory amounts can put the flat-rate share above 20 % of everything granted to the directors. The two tests are independent, so fixing the first does not fix the second — and topping up in cash actually helps the ratio, while topping up in benefits makes it worse.

One open point

The Council of State flagged an unresolved equality concern in its opinion on the draft: the 20 % sanction applies only to small companies. That objection was not settled in the adopted text, so a correction or an administrative circular remains possible.

Treat it as an open point rather than as settled law. It does not change what you do this autumn — the condition applies from assessment year 2027 and the amount is EUR 51,000 — but it is a reason not to lock a client into a multi-year remuneration structure whose only justification is the benefits ratio.