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(Created on 01/02/2009 20:40 - Edited on 28/10/2009 10:33)

And more!

Obviously, you know how much you earn each month. But do you know the value of the indirect bonuses you receive? Did you know that on average, these are worth some 13 % of an employee’s total salary?

This is because an increasing number of employers give their staff additional bonuses as part of their contract, which are interesting from a tax perspective. These bonuses mean less tax for you and your employer.

Deductions

You appreciate that before you receive your take-home pay, several amounts are deducted. Examples include sickness benefits premiums, unemployment insurance, pension deductions – in short, the cost of your Social Security or RSZ.

Once these amounts have been deducted, the remainder is your gross taxable salary.

Take-home pay

Gross taxable salaries are lowered by company deductions at source. These are advances on your income tax that are transferred directly by your employer to the tax office. The actual amount is determined by set scales, depending on the size of your salary, age and the number of dependents you have. What is left after this deduction is your take home pay.

Additional benefits

Because they are less heavily taxed, many employees welcome indirect, non-cash bonuses. Well known examples are luncheon vouchers, share purchase options, GSM, cheap or interest-free loans, insurance or additional pension contributions. This list is not exhaustive, and is continuously upgraded. For employees, they represent very welcome and useful supplements to basic salaries.

Extra taxes

It is not easy to assess the value of these added bonuses. If your children regularly use the computer your employer provided for out of office working, for example, the tax authority can treat this as a bonus, and might therefore include it in your company’s deductions at source. The tax authority ignores some bonuses completely. With others, specific rules apply when calculating their taxable value, e.g. the value of GSM credits are stipulated by the tax authority, as are the price of the telephone and the subscription fees.