Do you provide employees with a company laptop and/or smartphone or do you let them use their own devices? Many companies prefer the first option. We weigh the pros and cons of a company laptop or smartphone.

Do you have a smartphone through your employer? We recently asked our readers this question. Of the more than two hundred participants, 58 percent answered “yes,” compared to 42 percent who used a self-purchased device. We would venture to predict that the majority would have answered the same question about laptops that their laptop came from their employer.

After all, it has been common practice for many years for employers to provide their employees with laptops and/or smartphones during the term of the employment contract. Laptops and smartphones are standard equipment for many employees. But devices for business use often come with a corresponding price tag that the average employee would rather not bear. A company laptop and a smartphone seem to be a win-win situation for employers and employees.

But a company laptop/smartphone comes with legal obligations. Therefore, it is important to know these before purchasing devices for your employees. The rules determine whether this extra is sufficiently useful for your company.

Benefits of all kinds

Belgian tax law considers a laptop or smartphone to be part of the employee’s remuneration, under the well-known heading of “extrastatutory benefits”. This must therefore be included in the employment contract. Non-statutory benefits are a popular way for employers to put together an attractive salary package while keeping direct wage costs lower.

There are still many differences within the fringe benefits. The “benefit in kind” category includes a laptop or smartphone, which also includes a company car, for example. According to the law, the advantage is that employees are often allowed to use these devices privately.

Nothing in life is completely free, so you have to pay (limited) taxes and social security contributions for your business electronics. A fixed flat rate applies to this, which is not based on the purchase value of the device. For laptops this sum is 72 euros per year and for a smartphone it is 36 euros. Peripheral devices such as screens and charging cables are not charged, but internet or mobile phone subscriptions are (60 euros or 48 euros per year).

With this design, the employee still benefits significantly cheaper than if he had to buy the equipment himself. These rules also apply if you, as a self-employed person, purchase a laptop for yourself through your company.

It is significantly cheaper for the employee than if he had to buy the devices himself.

Private use or not?

For the law, it is an important difference whether the work laptop or the smartphone is also used for private purposes. If this is not the case, the device is placed on the same level as other office equipment and the employer does not have to report it to the RSZ. In the past, this has led to several disputes between employer and employee, but also with the tax office.

Where do you draw the line between purely professional use and private use? Does following news during work hours count as personal use (if you’re not a journalist)? With smartphones, this line is even thinner because we carry this device with us everywhere. Who hasn’t used their work phone to let the home front know you’re on your way home?

The fact that employees are also allowed to use their work devices privately is no exception, as we learn from the current figures for smartphones and tablets that SD Worx shared with our editorial team. According to estimates by the Social Secretariat, this is around fifteen percent across all sectors. These are predominantly employees: around one in five people has a smartphone or tablet provided by their employer. For managers, this percentage is forty percent.

Belgium would not be Belgium if the interpretation of the legislation did not vary from case to case. In order not to have to comply with the reporting obligation, the RSZ is assuming a complete ban on private use. However, it also happened that strict restrictive measures were considered by a court to be sufficient to no longer regard the use of the laptop as a private benefit. As an employer, it is best not to take any risks, as failure to declare benefits in kind will result in hefty fines, which can also be collected retrospectively.

It is important to make clear agreements in the employment contract about what employees can and cannot do with the devices provided to them. If you want to limit private use, you can, for example, only rent Internet access via a secure VPN connection. Be careful here, too, because extensive controls over your employees’ device use can bring you dangerously close to violating data protection laws.

Make clear agreements about what employees can and cannot do with the devices provided to them.

BYOD: It’s better to leave your personal laptop at home

We also saw the principle during the corona pandemic Bring your own device gain in importance. Back then, this was primarily done out of necessity: Not everyone was equipped with the right device to be able to work from home day after day, and the private laptop turned out to be a good interim solution. Whether or not a personal laptop has a place in the workplace is also a valid discussion in a hybrid work context, although the majority of employers seem to prefer not to have it. There are good reasons for this, as we explain in detail in this article.

First, personal laptops are a nightmare for IT administrators. However, the main argument against BYOD is security. It’s much harder to verify that your employees have a good antivirus installed on their desktop laptop, and consumer laptops rarely offer the same level of security as business models. An MDM solution provides a temporary solution, but IT teams have much less freedom to monitor an employee’s personal laptop if it also contains personal files.

The principle of BYOD also seems to apply to smartphones. People find it much more inconvenient to have to juggle two different smartphones, and a smartphone has to fit their personal needs even better than a laptop. However, this is also not without risk to your company’s security, as the smartphone also has access to important files in the cloud.

The balance

As with everything in life, there are good reasons to be for or against a company laptop or smartphone. The concept has been established in the Belgian business landscape for many years and will not disappear immediately. All in all, the balance also seems positive when it comes to allowing your employees to buy their own stuff, but definitely don’t do it just for the (negligible) tax incentive. What is more important is that you equip your employees with the appropriate materials and that you also have control over how they use these materials.