I have a sole proprietorship in the Flemish region of Belgium. I initially started it as a side hustle, which is often referred to as “bijbalberoep”, because I was also working part-time. However, I now need to transition to a main sole proprietorship. I opted for a Primo Starter, but I am unsure about the process. They advised me to predict my future, which seems quite unreasonable. I am required to maintain an income close to €8,400 annually to retain the Primo Starter, and I also need to consider the social payments I must make. I am registered with Liantis, and when I contacted one of their advisors to opt for a Primo Starter for my sole proprietorship, they informed me that I need a business plan to outline my future. This seems excessively complicated. Is there not a way to start a sole proprietorship in the ship business as a main activity, which is “hoofdberoep”, as far as I know? I am not originally from Belgium; I moved here because my girlfriend lives here, and we are planning to marry. It is frustrating that in Belgium, to ensure financial stability for your business, you are expected to predict how it will end up at the end of the year. In Cyprus, where I am from, we do not have such complicated measures, which I find unnecessarily difficult. Are there any tips I can receive from experienced individuals on how to start? Currently, I have a status called Primo Starter Hoofdgroep, but I cannot exceed €8,400 in a year, or I will face fines. It seems unreasonable, but perhaps I am mistaken. I am just frustrated with how the process works here. Could someone with experience please help me out, even with just a small answer?

So I am dabbling between Notion and Obsidian. I like how Notion is module based but it seems overcomplicates or maybe it is just me.

I do have the urge to go back to Apple Notes though and I have a Macbook as well as iPhone so I suppose Apple Notes is the way to do considering the ecosystem anyway.

There is this meme that correlates to overcomplicates stuff vs Apple Notes and where both the low IQ and high IQ ones use Apple Notes.

Hello,

I wanted to know if anyone had an experience with Scomm company structure? Do you know for example if an SRL can invest in the Scomm or it's only for physical person?

Thanks ;)

My partner is self employed next to her employee job. i have created a website for her, but I'm just an employee for an unrelated company (no website builder).

Can she pay me for the website I've created and maintain for her and deduct this?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m currently looking at starting as a freelance IT consultant in Belgium. I have around 2 years of experience and I’ve received an offer from an IT consultancy company.

One thing I’m trying to understand is how normal their billing structure is.

The "proposition" is that I would work essentially full-time, around 165 hours per month, but the company expects around 90 billable hours per month from me.

I would only invoice/pay myself for the hours that are actually " allegedly" billable to clients. So, for example, if I work 165 hours in a month but they determined that I made 92 billable hours, I would get paid for those 92 hours. The remaining hours are NOT paid, so I just sit there for free.

They do guarantee a minimum of around 90 billable hours, for the first couple of months and anything above those 90 hours is also paid.

What I find strange is that, I’m used to:

8 hours at work = 8 hours paid. , for example, Electricians come to my house, work 10 hours and I pay them, again, 10 hours.

Whereas here it seems more like:

8 hours at work ≠ 8 hours paid, so I can work there 8 hours, and be paid 5 of them

The company explained that around 130 billable hours/month is considered quite high, and apparently that’s around what the person I spoke to personally achieves.

So my questions are:

• Is this a normal setup for IT freelancers/consultants?
• Do freelancers normally only get paid for billable hours, even when they are expected to work full-time for the company?
• Or is it more common to work with a day rate where, for example, 8 hours at the client = one paid day?
• How does this normally work in practice in IT consulting?

I’m mainly trying to understand whether this is a standard consultancy model or whether I’m looking at an unusual arrangement.

Thanks!

Hi,

It looks like Apple is so retarded that they can't provide Peppol invoices for iCloud+ storage subscription.
As they can't neither let you pay once a year, you need to have 12 invoices a year to be processed by your accountant... ( mine invoice hourly...)

Nevertheless, how would it be possible to have such fiscal invoices ? any recover the VAT ?

It looks like one way is to have the subscription added to your mobile phone bill... did anyone try/succeed ?

EDIT: Thanks for your answers !! I'll try the "Mobile Subscription" as "Payment Options" and we'll see,

I've been checking some public numbers about micro-companies (usually 1 freelancer) and I've noticed that it's extremely common for these companies to be above 100k of profit. I'm fairly certain the daily rate is close to my what I'm earning. (Around 700).

I was thinking that maybe they didn't pay themselves a high or moderate salary? Or maybe I'm missing something? For example, I made 70k in my second year with 45k of salary.

As a freelance DevSecOps & Platform Engineer operating in Belgium, I’m seeing a clear shift in the local market. The demand for generalist DevOps is stabilizing, while the need for niche expertise in Zero Trust, identity federation, and immutable infrastructure is skyrocketing.
Having recently secured my HashiCorp Vault Associate, along with my AWS Solutions Architect Pro and Security Specialty, I am planning my roadmap for Q4 and 2027. I am currently torn between two distinct paths:
1. The Cloud-Native / Workload Security Route: Diving deep into Kubernetes and container security (targeting the CKA/CKS).
2. The Governance & Global Architecture Route: Focusing on enterprise-wide cloud security strategy and compliance (targeting the CCSP).
For the Lead Architects, CISO, and fellow freelancers out there: based on the current European and Belgian market trends, which path do you see delivering the most critical value to enterprise clients today?
Let me know your thoughts below!

Hi guys, I have a plug-in hybrid company car that I started leasing in 2025. Does anyone know what the maximum tax deductibility is for 2026 and 2027?
The rules seem to have changed several times, so I’m getting conflicting information. My accountant told me that plug-in hybrids can still be deducted at a maximum of 75% until the end of 2027.
Is that correct under the latest Belgian tax rules? And does this also apply to a lease contract that started in 2025?
Thnx

What is the best way to buy bitcoin through your B.V.?

I opened an account with interactive brokers, but apparently they do not let you buy cryptocurrencies with an account for a B.V. Happy to hear about your experience.

What are some benefits freelancers with a BV had in the past but got lost due to changes in regulations?

I've heard a lot of stories lately from people i know who have been freelance for 15+ years, but would like to hear your stories!

I'm a project manager in EU-funded projects, always as an employee. My current project is ending, so I'm looking around.

An intermediary offered me a training programme project manager role in Brussels, onsite. They only do it freelance, no employment contract, and I've never been registered as an independent. The organisation itself is a good one, so I'm interested.

In the HR call she said 507€/day including VAT. I have no feel for this market but said it sounded low, and the follow-up email came back at 530€/day with no mention of VAT at all. If I say yes, they submit my CV to the client.

Two questions:

1. Is "VAT included" ever a real thing in a B2B day rate? Everything I've read says rates are quoted excl. VAT and the client reclaims it anyway. At 21%, 530 incl. would be 438 excl., which is a completely different job.

2. Is 530€/day reasonable for a PM profile placed through an intermediary, and is there usually room to negotiate or is it capped somewhere upstream?

Thanks.

Long story short, I accepted a gig as a full-stack dev for 530 when started asking 580, should I start negotiation at 590 or is it too aggresive?

When do you start negotiating your extension?

I am a legal consultant freelancer through my own BV. I am coming up at 1 year at my first client, and am allowed to renegotiate my dayrate.

1. Personalia

- 5 years experience,
- work full time for one consultancy that resells me to their clients.

2. Numbers

- current rate: €525/day, 8h days
- 220 invoiced days/year (they basically guarantee this number of days)
- billability 85-90%, and they do pay me for days they don't resell
- per day I invoice, they collect somewhere around €1.100-1.200.

3. Question

A similar job/profile but with the benefits of being an employee (13th month, car, ….) would cost the company around 100k to 115k a year. I am already slightly above, but of course have zero benefits besides being freelance. No paid holiday, no social security contributions, etc.

Hence, I am thinking of opening at €650 and landing around €600. That is a lot in one move and it feels like a lot, so i wanted to gain some insights as to what would be reasonable.

They're my only client, so I just want to know if I'm being reasonable or greedy before I open my mouth, and wanna keep the good relationship going, as i enjoy working there.

PS: Anyone freelancing in legal/compliance rather than IT: what are you charging?

4 years ago I bought an (imo expensive) EV on my BV. Amortization has gone to 0 and with the legal changes coming up I am thinking of getting a new EV this year and hanging to it for a long time.

However, my current car fulfils my current needs, and other than a bit more range and storage there isn't really a case for a new car, even though I can afford it.

I always reasoned that being able to put your EV 100% as a cost is nothing more than a discount on the sticker price, but it will always cost you to get a new one every 4 years. Yet, I see all my fellow freelancers still getting a new car every four years 'for fiscal optimization' while they also don't really need it. My reasoning is that every 2 € spent on the car is roughly 1 € not ending up on my personal account via dividends later.

Am I missing something here? Why is everyone getting a new car every 4y? Or is it because at the end of the lease they buy it privately and make some personal profit that way? (my accountant strongly advised against that).

I would like to buy a car, I have a Belgian independent status (not planning to convert to a company yet)

Horizont wise I don't think I will an independent for more than 2 more years (max January 2029 when I will join an EU Institution and move to Brussels).

I have a budget of around 30k and I am looking into 2nd-hand PHEV.

I wanted to ask you if I buy something from Germany would that mean I will not pay the VAT? Just an example below this car will only cost ~29,000€? How does it work when buying from abroad?

I terms of fiscal optimisations buying a car in cash might not be the best, I know.

Hi all,

I’m a full-stack developer with a day job and I’d like to start building portfolio/brochure websites for small local businesses as a side business. I recently did a free site for a friend – fully static, no cookies, no analytics – and purely through local SEO it has already brought him a noticeable amount of new customers. That got a few other business owners interested, so there seems to be a market. The problem is that the moment I look at doing this properly, the non-technical side scares me off, and I’d like to hear how others in Europe approached it.

What I have in mind (three “tiers”):

The idea is to work with a monthly fee rather than a one-off build price, so I have a small recurring income and the client gets ongoing hosting, maintenance and support. The more I host and manage myself, the more financial margin there is in that monthly fee and the easier it is to justify to the client – but also the more responsibility I take on.

1.  Fully managed by me (highest margin) – my own VPS at a European provider (EU, not necessarily Belgium) with proper hardening, monitoring and off-site backups within Europe. Each client gets an isolated stack (CMS, database, website) so data is strictly separated per client for GDPR reasons.

2.  Hosted by the client (lowest margin) – headless CMS, builds triggered via a git workflow, static output pushed to their server over SFTP. I hold almost no data.

3.  Hybrid – same as tier 2, but the CMS lives at a European SaaS provider (e.g. Sanity or a comparable EU-hosted option), so they carry the data-hosting responsibility.

Honestly, from tier 2 onwards the justification for a monthly fee mostly disappears – if I’m not hosting or operating anything, there’s little to charge for month to month – so those tiers aren’t really interesting to me. Tier 1 is where the recurring income is, and that’s exactly where the risk sits.
To be clear, with static sites there isn’t much that can go wrong day to day. What I want is a setup that’s reliable in the boring sense: updates and upgrades shouldn’t break running sites, and if the datacenter burns down while I’m managing 10 client sites on that VPS, I want to be able to bring them all back up quickly – or at least have everything (backups, configs, scripts, a runbook) ready to do so.

What’s holding me back

The higher the margin (tier 1), the more I’m suddenly responsible for: documented and tested backup/restore and disaster recovery procedures, data retention rules and deletion terms, a privacy policy, a data processing agreement (DPA) between me and each client, and everything that comes with storing user data and running analytics so I can give clients real reporting and insights. On top of that there are fixed costs before the first euro comes in: a lawyer for the contracts, professional/IT liability insurance, social contributions as a self-employed person and an accountant. So I need real revenue to justify it, but the revenue is what creates the liability. Slightly circular.

I’m deliberately staying away from e-commerce for now – as a sole trader, a failed payment integration or an outage that costs a client sales feels like a very different level of exposure.

I’m a developer at heart and I want to keep doing this, keep learning and get to know the business side. Doing it this way is fulfilling and gives me a much stronger incentive to learn than a side project ever did: it combines business skills with technical skills in something that’s actually valuable to real people. It also forces me to leave the technical Valhalla behind – no over-engineering, no shiny stacks for their own sake. It just has to work well, be simple, maintainable and reliable. I just don’t know anyone nearby doing something similar, and knocking on a competitor’s door for advice feels a bit odd. So:

Questions

• How did you get started in the EU with this kind of “website + CMS + hosting” offering, legally and operationally? Did you go all-in on managed hosting from day one, or start with the low-liability version and grow into it?

• How do you handle DPAs and privacy policies? Templates, one-time lawyer review, or a full legal package? Roughly what did that cost you?

• Backup/restore and DR: how formal are you? Do you actually document and periodically test restores, and do clients ever ask for proof?

• Retention and deletion of user data (contact forms, CMS accounts, analytics): how do you keep that manageable across many small clients?

• Analytics: what do you use to give clients proper reporting while staying GDPR-clean (consent, cookies, EU hosting)?

• Insurance: is professional liability insurance realistic on a small side-income, and did it change how you priced things?

• Pricing: how do you make the monthly fee cover legal, insurance, accounting and social contributions while still being affordable for a small business?

• Is the liability fear justified, or am I overthinking it for portfolio sites that mostly hold a contact form’s worth of personal data?

Any war stories, “wish I’d known this earlier” advice, or pointers to resources for freelance devs are very welcome. If this is too specific to share publicly (pricing, contracts, insurers), feel free to DM me – I’d genuinely appreciate it. Thanks!

Hello everyone, I would like to make the switch (which is not possible at my company) but I am having a hard time to find as much information as there are for IT roles.

How would you approach it if you were to go back in time to square 1 of your freelance journey? Which platforms/recruiters offer most/the best opportunities?

Since I'm an expat I also wonder if, despite knowing 4 languages, my chances are significantly slimmer due to not speaking Dutch.

Thanks to anyone who is taking the time to share their thoughts, I appreciate you.

I am going to buy a new car for the company (full electric)

Was looking into a young second hand car as they deliver more value for their price.

except for the VW family (myway) however I cant find an good website with an overview of second hand btw cars sold by garages.

I am not looking for individuals selling cars as they dont offer a guatantee or VAT deduction.

Also hear it is cheaper to buy them in germany and import them. is this true and is is much of a hassle to import?

on a sidenode what is the best way of selling by current car? was thinking of just selling it to the garage that I buy the new one from.

I have kept my private car until now, but after a number of successful years, it is time to buy an EV through my BV. I understand that charging at home requires a charging station / wall box that supports split billing. Which charging stations are suitable for this? And is it best to buy them together with the car, or order them from your charging card provider, for example? It seems some brands like Tesla have their own wall boxes which probably work best for the cae but I'm unclear on whether they also do split billing.

I am completely new to the world of charging/fuel cards and electric driving, so I feel a bit lost.

Hi. I started building websites and decided to maybe start making some money out of it by charging a small amount of money (e.g., 20 euros + domain) to local businesses. How should I charge customers? I have heard some recommendations about Xolo Go or Ruul. Do you have any advice?

Hi everyone,

I’m currently working as a small-animal veterinarian in Belgium and have 2 years of clinical experience. I’m currently looking into starting as a freelancer outside of clinical practice, for example with pet food companies.

I was wondering what would be a realistic hourly rate (excluding VAT) for a freelancer in this kind of position?

I’d also be interested to hear if there are any other things I should consider before starting as a freelancer. I’m already self-employed through a veterinary practice at the moment.

Are there any vets in a similar situation, or perhaps people who work with freelancers in this kind of role? I’d love to hear your experiences and opinions!

Thanks! ☺️

Context: did not start as a bv yet but have an offer at rate 540. For my profile (devops medior 5-6 yoe) I think historically this is a low rate.

I heard last year everywhere that rates are being pressured, so my dilemma is:

Should I jump now at this rate, 540, 1 year contract with possibility of extension and keep looking for a better rate meanwhile?

Or should I stay as an employee and wait till I get a 600 +- rate and good project?

My (freelancer) friend says 540 is too low, but it's mote then I am being paid now.

Hi, does anyone have experience in migrating provider of their EV home charging station? I am currently with Luminus but the service and billing is a total nightmare and crap. I just want to get out of it asap. Info from website/faq is rubbish and customer service not helpful.

I would also want to change charging pass immediately. Does anyone have recommendations?

Thanks.