Loss of salary due to the coronavirus: tips for employers

The coronavirus crisis is making a lot of people anxious these days. This makes it more important than ever to communicate with your employees in a clear and transparent way. To alleviate your employees' anxiety, it is important to proactively indicate what their income will look like for this month. In this way, you will show commitment as an employer and employees will have a good idea of what their wages and benefits will look like at the end of the month. In addition, some employers choose to provide supplementary compensation to limit the loss of wages.

Temporary unemployment

In the case of temporary unemployment due to force majeure, there are several aspects that you as an employer must take into account. However, due to the amount of information available today, it can be very confusing, both for you as an employer and for your employees. Because employees like to know what this means in concrete terms for their net income, our specialists can provide an individual overview for each employee. In this way, it is clear to them what they will receive in terms of benefits and wages. In addition, we also check whether there are certain support measures that they are eligible for.

Supplementary compensation

As an employer, you can also opt to provide supplementary compensation to limit your employees' loss of wages. Under a number of conditions, this supplementary compensation is free of employers' tax and personal social security contributions and can therefore be fiscally worthwhile. In addition, there is a fixed percentage of 26.75% withholding tax. It is important to apply this supplementary compensation in the same way for all employees.

Our specialists can help you to inform your employees with ease and professionalism and to find out whether a supplementary compensation might be worthwhile. Contact your account manager or one of our specialists via corona@vdl.be for more information.