FAQ

Granting meal vouchers retroactively is not recommended and is only possible if there is a rectification. If too many or too few meal vouchers were granted, this can be rectified the following month.

The legislation on meal vouchers in Belgium stipulates that employees within the same category, i.e. with the same working regime, must receive meal vouchers with the same nominal value. This is to avoid arbitrary discrimination. 

Employers who want to grant meal vouchers with a different nominal value to different employee categories must do so in an objective manner. According to this rule, the agreement that establishes this extralegal benefit may include different amounts depending on the status of the employee (full-time or part-time).  

Attention: if objectivity seems questionable, it is best to seek advice from the NSSO (National Social Security Office).  

Meal vouchers are usually granted on the basis of the number of days or hours worked. A part-time employee will therefore logically receive less meal vouchers than a full-time employee.  

Since 1 January 2007, self-employed business managers may grant themselves meal vouchers under certain conditions:  

• The number of meal vouchers granted must correspond to the number of days on which the self-employed business manager actually worked. No more days may be contributed than the maximum number of days a full-time employee may work in the company concerned.  
• A self-employed manager who hires staff may only grant himself meal vouchers if his employees also receive them. The meal vouchers granted to the self-employed manager may not have a higher value than that of his employees.  

Attention: small self-employed persons and members of a liberal profession cannot get meal vouchers because the legal form of the self-employed person must explicitly be a company.  

Find more information here.

Everyone with an employment contract that mentions the granting of meal vouchers. The same therefore applies to certain categories of workers, such as:  

• Job students  
• Trainees paid under an employment contract  
• Teleworkers  
• Employees with a special status  

However, volunteers, who by definition are not paid and are not bound by an employment contract, are not entitled to this extralegal benefit. 

In principle, meal vouchers are not mandatory. For some joint committees, however, it is an obligation. The granting and associated conditions are chosen by the employer. The conditions are defined in a sectoral, company collective bargaining agreement (CBA) or in an individual employment contract. 

Feel free to contact us to find out whether the granting of this benefit is an obligation for your joint committee.  

The maximum value of a meal voucher is €8 per day worked. However, it is possible to order a lower nominal value of meal vouchers.  

The value of the meal voucher is always composed of an employer and employee contribution  

• The employer’s contribution amounts to a maximum of € 6.91  
• The employee contribution amounts to a minimum of € 1.09

The meal voucher is an extralegal benefit. It allows the employer to motivate its employees with additional purchasing power. Moreover, the meal voucher is fiscally attractive. Meal vouchers may only be used to pay for a meal or purchase food items.