Income

Parental leave allowance is a replacement income calculated on the basis of:

• the pensionable income declared by the employer to the Social Security Affiliation Centre (Centre d’affiliation de la sécurité sociale) during the 12 months preceding the start of the parental leave;
• the average number of hours worked in the 12 months preceding the start of the parental leave.

To determine how much tax you have to pay, you first need to know whether you have a main or the additional tax card. The withholding tax of the holder of a main withholding tax card is calculated by application of the scale on salaries and wages or the scale on pensions and annuities. The additional tax card has a fixed withholding rate of 15% (class 2), 21% (class 1A) or 33% (class 1). A single main tax card is issued for what is expected to be the highest gross annual wage. Provided that married spouses are taxed collectively, they get only one main form for their joint household.

 

The applicable limits vary according to the average hours:

 

For a full-time leave (gross amount in €):

 

For a part-time leave:

 

For a split leave:

 

You can calculate your gross parental leave allowance using our calculator.

 

Example :

You are applying for full-time parental leave starting in February 2022. From February 2021 to June 2021 you earned 3.000€ gross for a full-time job (40 hours per week). Afterwards you started working part-time (20 hours per week) from July 2021 and earned 1.500€ per month. You notify your employer of your parental leave in October 2021. You are entitled to full-time or part-time parental leave with 10 hours work per week from February 2022. As during the 12 months preceding your parental leave you earned an average of 2.125€ per month and worked an average of 28 hours per week, the ceiling for your full-time parental leave is 2.125€ gross per month and 1.062,50€ gross per month for half-time parental leave