Entrepreneurship is growing rapidly in Brussels. From 2015 to 2024, there was a 26% increase in the number of VAT-registered businesses in the Brussels-Capital region, according to analysis published by the Brussels Institute for Statistics and Analysis.
As of 2024, there were 122,725 businesses in the region, with significant growth being observed in IT, transport, and business services.
While more people are taking the leap into entrepreneurship, business owners say that in Belgium, turning an idea into a company involves significant challenges.
Navigating Belgian bureaucracy
Aside from linguistic barriers, one of the biggest difficulties business owners encounter is in navigating the notoriously complex Belgian bureaucracy. To establish a business in Belgium, you must go through a number of steps, including registering with a business counter, setting up social security payments and working out your tax obligations.
Victor Jones* knows the struggle. He runs a coaching business focused on physical and mental wellbeing and has been collaborating with clients in Belgium for over 18 years. “It took me 10 years to understand the processes and the administration,” he told The Brussels Times.
“When you look for information, it seems that you’re on your own. There is no clear guidance where you can go and receive every answer that you need.”
Sometimes, Jones explained, when you have a question, you just need to find the answer and it takes a lot of energy and time, “which you don’t spend developing your business.”
Pooja Khati, founder of Piro Siro, a Brussels-based chilli oil brand, said she found the process of registering her business in the city challenging, and became frustrated over the fees she was expected to pay to make changes to her status.
“You need to sign up through a third-party in a social fund and every time you need to make a change in your status you have to pay a fee,” she explained. Khati, said she needs a degree flexibility in her status since she is "still figuring out the needs" of her business.
Dealing with uncertainty – and high taxes
Financial uncertainty is another recurring challenge for entrepreneurs, particularly during the first years of running a business. According to Andrea Bittnerova, an event and content strategist and the owner of LivingBrussels.eu, there is not enough support for new entrepreneurs in the Belgian capital.
“It’s expensive to be an entrepreneur here because the taxes are very high and there’s a lot of uncertainty in the first year,” Bittnerova said. “You are not sure how much to pay for social security or how much to put away for taxes. If you’re a gig freelancer, you have no clarity and the whole financial situation makes it challenging,” she said.
Echoing similar concerns, Manon Wery, founder of Chouke, a hormonal skincare brand, explained that research and development (R&D) is one of the biggest challenges she encountered when setting up her business, pointing out that it took “time and money”.
According to Wery, doing R&D for a product is a long process. “You need to be very patient and it’s also the moment when you aren’t selling but you’re still working on the project and you have zero revenue,” Wery explained.
She claims that traditional financing is hard to come by in Belgium. “Banks won’t give a loan for R&D, marketing, or communications,” she told us. “They can only help with physical assets, but that was not my case.”
Wery described a successful crowdfunding venture as a turning point for her business. She opted for a pre-order model to gauge whether there was a genuine interest in her product before moving to full-scale production.
“I launched a campaign to validate the concept and get direct financial support from the people who actually wanted this product to exist. And it worked,” she said. “I had my formulas ready, but we still needed to do many tests.”
Microcredit providers are another option, but their interest rates are comparatively high. A microcredit is a professional loan of up to €25,000 granted to entrepreneurs, and typically repayable over a period of 48 to 60 months. According to VLAIO, miscroStart offers loans between €500 and €25,00 with interest rates starting from 11.13%.
Loneliness and isolation
Beyond administrative and financial hurdles, running a business can be isolating, especially for freelancers and solo founders.
“Often, I am at my desk in my apartment on my own. I do miss going to the office and having daily contact with people,” Bittnerova said.
Finding customers and clients is another hurdle many face, particularly when launching a business without an established network.
Nail technician Yuliana Georgieva experienced this firsthand when she opened her medical pedicure salon in Gembloux, Wallonia, where she "didn't know anyone". Her network and client base was primarily in Brussels, so attracting new clients from scratch has not been easy.
To overcome this issue, she built a website and started writing educational blog posts. She also designed her own flyers and distributed them to attract clients.
What she didn’t expect was having to pay a tax for designing and distributing her own advertising materials. “For every flyer that my kids and I distributed in post boxes, I had to pay a tax and that was really surprising,” Georgieva said.
“Little by little people started coming but I still cannot fully cover my rent there,” she said. “I’m still working in Brussels to cover my expenses in Gembloux.”
Advice from entrepreneurs on how to get ahead
Many of the business owners we spoke to suggested hiring an accountant and a lawyer to provide business advice.
“The first step I should have taken before getting an accountant is getting a lawyer, because they know all the regulations,” said Jones.
Khati and Bittnerova also stressed the importance of hiring an accountant. “I wouldn’t have any idea how to navigate the system,” Bittnerova explained, adding that she had already encountered situations where she would have made mistakes if she hadn’t asked her accountant for advice.
Georgieva underscored another important reason to hire an accountant – namely the time it saves from doing additional work. “There’s a lot of bureaucracy and I don’t have the physical time to do it and learn about all legal matters,” she said.
Wery offered another piece of advice to budding entrepreneurs: don’t be afraid to talk about your idea.
“The feedback you get from talking early is worth far more than the risk. And if you can, join an incubator program early. It accelerates everything and it gives you a support system when things get hard," she said.
Véronique Flammang, Head of Information at hub.brussels, which provides information and practical advice to entrepreneurs in the Belgian capital, argues that many new entrepreneurs try to handle everything themselves and soon find themselves overwhelmed.
“One of the key qualities of a successful entrepreneur is knowing how to build the right support network and ask for help when needed,” she said.
According to Flammang, "efforts are underway" to simplify administrative procedures in Belgium, with many entrepreneurs requesting clear-cut guidelines about tax and social security contributions, as well as a reduction in administrative fees as a way to encourage new business ownership.
“While it sometimes takes time to implement, things are moving in the right direction," she said.
* Not his real name.
