Status or job seeker-self-employed in secondary occupation

If you are a job seeker entitled to benefits, you must be careful when starting up as a self-employed person in a secondary occupation, because you cannot be self-employed and receive unemployment benefits at the same time. As long as you are not entitled to benefits (during your waiting period, for example), there is no problem. Once you become eligible for benefits, you must report this to the RVA (via your payment institution) and the VDAB. The principle is that as soon as you work as a self-employed person between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., you are not available for the labour market on those days (including weekends). You must fill in those days on form C3 as W or A and you are not allowed to declare them as undeclared work. You will not received on unemployment benefits for those days. If you carry out your self-employed activity after 7 p.m. and before 7 a.m., you can received on unemployment benefits during the days when you are self-employed in the evening. It is not clear how the VDAB and/or the RVA check when you are actually enabled. It depends, of course, on the type of self-employed activity. If you perform physical labour at a specific location (e.g. as a subcontractor on a construction site), your presence is noted on site and the RVA can check this. If you only offer intellectual services, they cannot know when you perform those services. The only thing they can know is the invoice date (and possibly the hours and days of your work that you put on it to pass on to your client).

Hi JV. In my original message, I was referring specifically to the special Springplank statute, which allows you to "work as a self-employed person in a secondary occupation for 12 months without a loss of your benefits."