Urgent question on special tax status and travel exclusion

Hello Marici,
I have been here a long time working in HR (specifically pensions), but now spend my time helping people with investment of savings.

Some employers promise a net salary (including the effect of the  concession). That might help you if you find you travel less than assumed. But the other side of this might be that you would not benefit if you travel more. An employer will normally want to  avoid giving an incentive to travel whether necessary or not, because it benefits the employee financially.

A lot depends on the company you will work for. If for example it were based in the US and you had for time to time to visit there, you are unlikely to go for the day. If it is based in Switzerland it is easier to go for the day. Clearly if you have two or three "long trips" a year you will more easily get to 25%. If only travelling within Europe quite a lot of places are reachable in a day trip.
Otherwise there is very little to do to reduce income taxes, except diverting income into pension, but I wouldn't do that until and unless you decide to stay here long term.

I suspect that you will have to bite the bullet and trust that your employer is giving a realistic assessment of the situation. Most international companies operate very correctly; if the company sells oranges off a barrow they are unlikely to have subsidiaries all over the place.

I would be happy to answer any question you may have, and if you wish to meet up when you are in Belgium next.

Michael

Thank you for your reply, Michael. The offer is in gross salary and they have provided me with the net figures (prepared by a big tax advisory firm in Belgium) stating that the net is not too different from my current UK salary. But again, I believe the travel assumption is incorrect. Do you think it's reasonable to ask for a net offer now considering that they have already issued a gross one?

Well you could try. If it's a big company I would be surprised if it works. They may have  quite a lot of expatriates and the system will be fixed. If it's a smaller company they may be more  flexible.
Another thing to bear in mind is that 25% travel is an average of  more than one day a week. I don't know if you have travelled on business systematically, but it is not hard to get bored with airports, hotels, restaurant food, and the relatively difficult planning of personal life.

As they say this is more or less  what your net has been in UK, and you know what the job is while I don't, you could try saying you understand this is an estimate, and it is useful, but if the travel turned out less will they agree to compensate you. You certainly don't want to be pushing travel which is  not essential for the business, and you don't feel it would be helpful if you were in a position where you were tempted to do that to get your net pay right. Travel is expensive in money and working time, and one of your objectives will be to minimise travel while getting the job does as it should be.

Why would you take that job if you earn better here in the UK? This job would be fascinating if not the Covid situation. All the restrictions considered, traveling is more of a problem than pleasure, in my opinion. Not so long ago, I went on a rather unusual trip to the Faroe Islands. Given the pandemic, I thought a remote place like this one would be perfect, and I was not wrong. Only https://vacaytrends.com/maldives-honeymoon/ manage to book me a flight there; a lot of people haven't even heard of that place .