Brusselsculture & etiquette

Third-country nationals arriving on a long-stay visa must report to the foreigners' desk of their commune within eight working days. You get an Annexe 15 slip, and then a neighbourhood police officer calls at the address to confirm you genuinely live there. Nothing moves until that report comes back positive: no eID, no national register number, no bank account, no mutuelle. People assume the visit is a formality they can skip by being out; it is not, and a failed check restarts the clock. Make sure your name is on the letterbox and the doorbell before you go anywhere.

The special regime for foreign executives ended on 1 January 2022 and was replaced by the inbound taxpayer regime (BBIB/RSII) and its researcher variant (BBIO/RSICI). The internet is still full of the pre-2022 rules, which are simply wrong now. Under the current regime a portion of gross pay can be treated as tax-free expense reimbursement — raised from 30% to 35% and the old €90,000 cap abolished, with the minimum gross salary lowered from €75,000 to €70,000, applying to pay from 1 January 2025. Belgian social security has not followed: for contributions the 30% and €90,000 limits still apply. The employer must apply within a short window after you start; miss it and you do not get it.

Coverage in Belgium runs through a mutuelle/ziekenfonds that you pick yourself: CM, Solidaris, Partenamut, the neutral and liberal funds, or the free public fund CAAMI/HZIV. Your employer does not do it and the commune does not do it. Until you have joined, you carry the full cost of any treatment. If you were insured in another EU country, bring the S1 or E104 form — it carries your prior cover across and removes any waiting period a fund would otherwise apply.

Belgium's communal surcharge is a percentage added to the income tax you already owe, set by each commune and published by FPS Finance. For assessment year 2026 it runs from 4.9% in the City of Brussels to 7.5% in Ixelles, with Schaerbeek at 5.0%, Uccle at 5.6%, Saint-Gilles at 6.3% and Anderlecht, Forest and Molenbeek at 7.0%. That is a real, checkable difference on the same salary in the same region, decided by which side of a street you sign a lease on — and it is your registered address on 1 January that counts.

Brussels is officially French and Dutch, and every regional service, form and street sign must be in both. In practice French dominates daily life, English is ubiquitous in the European quarter and Dutch is a real working language in parts of the administration and in Flemish-community services. The fork that matters is schooling: you choose a French-language or a Dutch-language school system, they are run by different communities with different curricula and calendars, and moving a child between them mid-education is genuinely disruptive. Decide before you enrol, not after.

Under the Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the EU, officials pay an EU internal tax on their institutional salary, are exempt from national income tax on it, and are deemed to keep their tax domicile in the country they came from. They are also covered by the EU's own health scheme rather than a Belgian mutuelle. If your neighbour tells you Belgian tax is manageable and their pay comes from an institution, they are describing a different system from yours. It also lifts rents in Etterbeek, Ixelles and the European quarter well above what local salaries alone would support.