Employees in Belgium and teleworking declaration, to be filed before 6 April, 2021!
Working from home or teleworking is the norm during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the rules & administrative obligations regarding working from home are different in each country. For example, just before Easter, the Belgian government has issued a mandatory telework declaration, that employers have to file before 6 April, 2021. If you have personnel working in Belgium, please read on.
To whom does the telework declaration apply?
In Belgium, teleworking has been compulsory for some time for all staff employed in companies, associations and services, unless the nature of the employee’s position or the continuity of the business operations, activities or services makes this impossible.
The mandatory teleworking declaration is meant to push back the Covid-19 infections in Belgium and to enable the Belgian government to check obligatory teleworking. This new obligation applies to all employers with a Belgian company number.
You will find more information about the teleworking declaration in Belgium on the website of the Belgian government:
At first it was unclear whether this declaration was also mandatory for employers established outside Belgium with personnel in Belgium. The Belgian Social Security has now explicitly stated that this is NOT the case.
When and how should the teleworking declaration be filed?
What is striking is that the Belgian government published this new obligation in the Belgian Official Gazette on Friday, March 26, 2021, while the mandatory declaration has to be submitted no later than April 6, 2021!
Taking into account the holidays around Easter, employers only have exactly one week to comply with this obligation.
Moreover, employers who want to file this digital declaration need a Belgian E-id or the Itsme app (this is an online identification tool that allows people or companies to log in to official websites, such as eHerkenning or eRecognition in the Netherlands). Many companies are not very familiar with this procedure, which makes it hard to comply with this obligation.
According to the official information, this declaration applies to the situation on the first working day of the month, and it should be filed on the sixth calendar day of each month, at the latest. It is yet not clear how long this obligation to submit a telework declaration will be in use. It will probably depend on the developments regarding Covid-19 infections in Belgium.
What information do you need to submit the teleworking declaration?
You will need to indicate how many persons in your company (partly) work on Belgian territory. You will also need to indicate for how many of these people it is impossible to work from home via teleworking. As a social mandatory to our customers who have outsourced their Belgian payroll to Interfisc, we will make sure that we file their digital declaration in time.
Finally, we emphasize that this is not a Belgian April Fools’ Day Joke! Non-compliance with the rules on compulsory teleworking can result in criminal penalties and/or administrative fines.
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