Office lease or business address: choosing your registered office in Belgium

Key takeaways

• The office lease (or professional lease) falls under Belgian general law: no legal minimum term, no guaranteed right to renewal.
• The business address is a registered office address with no physical space, supplied by a provider mandatorily registered with the FPS Economy.
• Both solutions are tax-deductible; the office lease has, since 2024, imposed a declaration annex to attach to the tax return.
• The business address suits when the address alone is enough; the office lease, when a physical workspace is needed.

Fixing your company's registered office is one of the first concrete decisions of any Belgian entrepreneur. Two options recur regularly in this choice: renting an office and establishing the registered office there, or using a business address via a specialised provider. The office lease versus business address question involves distinct legal frameworks and significant cost gaps. This guide details the applicable rules and the criteria to make the right choice.

Office lease in Belgium: general law applies

In Belgian law, the term "professional lease" does not designate a legal category in its own right. Companies or liberal professionals who rent an office to carry out their activity without directly receiving clients there in practice conclude an office lease subject to the general law of the Civil Code (art. 1708 to 1762bis). The parties enjoy very broad contractual freedom to set the term, the amount of the rent, the charges and the termination arrangements.

This regime differs fundamentally from the commercial lease governed by the law of 30 April 1951, which imposes a principle term of nine years and grants the tenant a right to renewal as well as an eviction indemnity in the event of non-renewal. For a registered office without physical reception of clients, it is general law that applies, without these protections.

Concretely, this implies:

• No minimum term imposed by law. Leases of one, three or six years are found, according to the parties' agreement.
• No guaranteed right to renewal: at the expiry of a fixed-term lease, the contract ends without indemnity.
• For an open-ended lease: termination possible at any time subject to one month's notice under general civil law, unless a longer contractual clause applies.
• A rental guarantee of two to three months' rent is usually required by the landlord.

One practical precaution is needed before signing: check that the lease contract explicitly authorises the use of the premises as a company's registered office and that the landlord consents to it in writing. Some landlords refuse this use, because renting to a company rather than an individual weighs on their tax treatment (the gross rental income must be declared in addition to the cadastral income).

Business address: a regulated activity since 2018

A business address consists of fixing your company's registered office at the address of a specialised provider. Unlike the office lease, no physical workspace is supplied: the provider makes a professional address available and, depending on the formula, receives, digitises and forwards the official mail addressed to the company.

This activity is framed by the law of 29 March 2018 on the registration of company service providers, implemented by the royal decree of 11 October 2018. Anyone who professionally supplies a statutory seat address or a commercial address to a company is required to register with the FPS Economy before beginning to operate. The registration procedure is free and carried out online; the FPS has sixty days to rule on a complete file.

Registered providers are also subject to the obligations of the law of 18 September 2017 on the prevention of money laundering: they must identify each client and keep the files for ten years. A serious provider integrates these identity checks into its onboarding process, which may slightly lengthen the activation time by a few days.

When you take out a business address with a compliant provider, the address is valid for registration with the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (CBE). It is the address that will appear in the company's articles and on all official documents.

Two options for two different needs

	Office lease	Business address
Physical workspace supplied
Registered office address valid at the CBE
Official mail handling included
Applicable legal framework	General law (Civil Code)	Law of 29 March 2018
Minimum term imposed by law	None	None
Guaranteed right to renewal
Monthly financial commitment (indicative)	Several hundred euros	A few dozen euros
Tax-deductible
Tax declaration annex required since 2024

The decisive criterion is simple: the office lease supplies a workplace in addition to the address; the business address supplies the address alone. This fundamental difference conditions everything else.

Real costs and tax treatment

The office lease involves a monthly rent, generally indexed to the consumer price index, to which are added the common charges (cleaning, common areas, energy) and a rental guarantee. In the Brussels region, a small office of 15 to 30 m² represents, indicatively, a monthly commitment of several hundred euros all-inclusive, according to the surface and location. Outside the big cities, market rates are appreciably lower.

The business address is markedly less expensive. Address-only formulas start at a few dozen euros a month; formulas including receipt and forwarding of mail remain well below the cost of a physical office.

On the tax side, both solutions are treated identically: rent and business-address fees are deductible professional expenses for the company. There is, however, a difference in declaration procedure. Since assessment year 2024 (art. 307 §2/2 ITC 92, introduced by the law of 28 December 2023), any company that deducts a professional rent must attach to its return a tax annex (form 270 MLH) including the landlord's identity, the address of the property and the amount of rental payments made. Omitting this annex leads to the rejection of the deduction during a tax audit. Business-address fees, for their part, are justified by the provider's invoices, with no additional declaration formality.

VAT on business-address fees is recoverable if the company is subject to Belgian VAT.

Set up your company's business address in Belgium

A professional registered office address with mail handling, at a provider registered with the FPS Economy.

Discover the business addressSee our services

How to choose: the essential criteria

The central question is simple: do you need a physical space to carry out your daily activity, or only an official address for your company?

Questions to ask before choosing

• Do you receive clients in person?

  If so, you need a physical space. The business address does not meet that. An office lease or a coworking space with a separate business address will be necessary.

• Does your activity require storage or production space?

  The business address only covers the registered office. Any physical activity takes place in a separate unit of establishment, itself registered with the CBE.

• Are you in a launch or uncertainty phase?

  The business address, with no property commitment, reduces the initial financial risk. A lease can be taken out when the activity is stabilised and the need for space is confirmed.

• Do you want to separate your private address from the company's official address?

  A business address at a provider keeps your personal address out of the CBE. Using your home as registered office makes it public.

• Does your residential lease or co-ownership rules authorise professional use?

  Basing your company at your private home may be prohibited contractually or by the co-ownership, even if the law does not prohibit it in itself.

Many entrepreneurs opt for a mixed formula: a business address for the registered office, occasional coworking for meetings and client appointments. This combination clearly separates the two needs while controlling the budget, especially in the start-up phase.

If you are considering changing your office address later, see our guide on the transfer of the registered office in Belgium: the procedures and costs are detailed there depending on whether the change stays in the same linguistic region or not.

Going further

• Business address in Brussels: the complete guide, to understand the specifics of the capital.
• Transfer of the registered office in Belgium: procedure and costs, to anticipate a possible change of address.
• The register of registered providers and the legal framework of the business address on the FPS Economy website.