The Director's Current Account in Belgium: Loans To and From Your Company, Tax Rules, and Bookkeeping

You buy a €1,200 laptop for the company on your personal card. Two months later the company transfers €5,000 to you and you sort it out afterwards. Neither one is salary, a dividend, or an invoiced amount. Both land on the same account in your books: the director's current account, compte courant dirigeant in French, rekening-courant bestuurder in Dutch.

The tax treatment depends on which way the balance points.

This article is informational. Rates change every year and your situation may differ. Confirm the specifics with your accountant.

The two accounts

The current account is a running tally of what you and your company owe each other outside of payroll and invoices.

When the company owes you (you paid something for it, you put cash in, you left a salary or dividend unpaid), the balance is a debt of the company. Belgian charts keep it on a liability account under 489, "other sundry debts".
When you owe the company (it paid something for you, or you took money out), the balance is a receivable of the company, on an asset account under 416, "sundry receivables".

Accountants keep two accounts because the annual accounts must show the two positions separately, never netted. In practice one of them carries all the traffic in a given year. In most owner-managed companies the founder is a net lender, so the 489 account is the busy one and the 416 account sits empty.

When the company owes you

The credit balance arises from three things:

Expenses you paid personally. The laptop is a company expense whose counterpart is not the bank but your current account. The company now owes you €1,200.
Cash you put in without issuing shares. A €20,000 transfer from your personal account to cover payroll in a slow quarter is a loan to the company.
Money you were entitled to and did not take. A dividend voted by the general meeting and left in the company, or a deferred month of salary, moves to the current account until it is paid.

Getting paid back is not taxable. The company is repaying a debt it owes you.

The receipt has to be in the company's name

Who paid does not decide whether the VAT is recoverable; the document does. A supplier invoice made out to the company, with its VAT number, keeps its deductible VAT even if you paid it from a personal card. A supermarket ticket in your name does not. A restaurant bill has no recoverable VAT in Belgium whoever paid it, and fuel for a company car is 50% at best. Ask for a proper invoice at the till before you pay personally, or accept that the VAT is lost.

Charging interest

You may charge the company interest on what it owes you, and the company deducts it as a financial cost. Two caps apply. Interest above either cap is requalified as a dividend: taxed as such, and not deductible.

The rate. The market rate for 2025 is 7.08% (the Belgian MFI rate for variable-rate business loans in November 2024, 4.58%, plus 2.5 points). For 2026 it is 6%.
The amount. Interest is only deductible on the part of the loan up to the company's taxed reserves at the start of the year plus its paid-up capital at the end of the year. A €50,000 loan to a company with €10,000 of capital and no reserves earns deductible interest on €10,000 of it.

Since 2020 the rules cover any claim held by a director, by an individual shareholder, or by their spouse or minor children, not only formal loans. A dividend left unpaid on the current account counts. Claims held through a company that acts as director are outside it.

Interest you receive is movable income and the company withholds 30%: it files form 273A and pays the withholding within 15 calendar days of the interest being paid or attributed. "Attributed" is the moment the interest is credited to your current account, so booking interest at year end without paying it out still starts the clock.

Most founders with a modest credit balance do not charge interest. A few hundred euros of interest saves the company 20% or 25% in corporate tax, costs you 30% in withholding, and adds a 273A filing. It becomes worth doing when the balance is large and stays for years.

When you owe the company

The debit balance arises when the company pays for something personal (dinner with friends on the company card, a private phone line) or when you transfer money to yourself with no salary slip or dividend decision behind it. Until a salary or dividend decision covers it, the money is still the company's and it can claim it back.

A taxable benefit in kind. The tax administration treats a debit current account as an interest-free loan of indefinite term. The benefit is valued at a reference rate published each year: 5.57% for income year 2025 (6.25% for 2024), applied to the average monthly debit balance, or to the annual average when the balance barely moved. It is added to your director's remuneration on the 281.20 fiche, taxed at your marginal rate, and it is professional income for social security too, so it raises your social contributions. You avoid the benefit by paying the company interest at that rate or more.

The €50,000 minimum remuneration. Since income year 2026 a company needs to pay at least one director €50,000 to keep the reduced 20% corporate rate on its first €100,000 of profit, and at most one fifth of that remuneration may consist of benefits in kind. A large benefit from a debit current account can push a founder over that fifth and cost the company the reduced rate. Settling a debit balance with "extra salary" at year end is exactly how that happens.

A company-law procedure. A company lending to its own director is a conflict of interest. In a BV/SRL the director informs the other directors, who take the decision without them, and the minutes describe the transaction and its financial consequences (art. 5:76 of the Companies and Associations Code). A sole director who is also the sole shareholder does not have to abstain but still has to record the decision in a report. Without the procedure the transaction can be annulled. The procedure applies to directors; a shareholder who is not a director can borrow without it, but the tax rules above still apply.

Scrutiny from outside. A large debit balance reads as a disguised dividend to the tax administration. A bank reviewing a credit application will ask about it. If the company goes bankrupt, the trustee claims the balance from you personally. If you sell the company, the buyer will make you clear it at completion.

Non-profits. If your company is an ASBL/VZW, the debit side is not an option. An association may not grant an asset advantage to its administrators, and an interest-free advance is one.

What year end does to a debit balance

The benefit is computed on monthly averages, so repaying the balance on 28 December does not erase it. Eleven months of a €30,000 debit balance produce a benefit of around €1,500 at 5.57% whether or not the account is zero on the 31st. The order of events is: your accountant computes the average balance, the benefit goes on the 281.20 by the end of the following June, and the annual accounts disclose the receivable (see below).

The clean ways to close a debit balance are a repayment from personal funds, a dividend decided by the general meeting, or interest paid to the company. The dividend route has its own gates in a BV: the net-asset test and the liquidity test (arts. 5:142 and 5:143), with a written liquidity report from the board. A company with a thin balance sheet may not be allowed to distribute at all, and that is often the same company whose founder has been drawing on the current account.

How big is too big

There is no legal cap on the debit side. It costs you more than a bank once the benefit plus the social contributions on it exceed what the same money would cost you in interest. It is a solvency problem once it exceeds what you could repay from personal assets, because a trustee will ask. A balance that grows every year and is never repaid is what the tax administration treats as a disguised dividend.

What the annual accounts show

The two balances go on separate lines: a receivable on the director under "other receivables" (code 41), a debt to the director under "other debts" (code 47/48), or under long-term debts if you agreed a term longer than a year. Netting them is not allowed.

The annual accounts also carry a note on relations with directors, in the micro and abbreviated models as well as the full one. Code 9500 asks for the outstanding receivables on directors, their interest rate and duration, and any amounts written off. If you owe your company money at year end, it is on the public record at the National Bank.

What to keep

The invoice, in the company's name, for every expense you paid personally.
A dated transfer description for every cash injection ("loan from director").
A written loan agreement and the board or general meeting minutes whenever you charge interest, or whenever the balance is large enough that you would want a bank to see it documented. A few thousand euros of reimbursed expenses needs neither.
The conflict-of-interest minutes or report whenever the company lends to you.
The 273A filing and payment proof for any interest attributed to you.
A year-end statement of the balance, signed by both sides. Accountants ask for it, and it is what the 9500 note is built from.

How to record it

In Financica the two accounts are seeded in every Belgian chart: 489000 Director current account (payable) and 416000 Director current account (receivable). Both are ordinary accounts. A bank line "Transfer to Jerome" is categorized onto 489000 like any other. An expense you paid personally is recorded as usual, then settled against 489000 as a manual payment instead of a bank account, so the invoice shows as paid and the company's debt to you grows by the same amount. When you reimburse yourself, one transfer for the month categorized onto 489000 brings the balance back down; the individual receipts do not need to be matched one by one.

With several directors, create one sub-account per person (489001, 489002) so each balance, and each benefit in kind, stays separate.

The year-end close checks flag a liability account carrying a debit balance. That catches a credit current account that has drifted into debit, before the annual accounts are drawn up.

The Director's Current Account in Belgium