Means test for the living wage: what counts, including abroad

The right to social integration, of which the living wage is the best-known form, is laid down in the wet van 26 mei 2002 (Act of 26 May 2002). One of the conditions is that the applicant does not have sufficient resources and cannot obtain them through their own efforts or in another way. The OCMW must check this with a social investigation before it decides.

In that investigation, the OCMW counts in principle all resources, of whatever nature and origin, unless the Act or the implementing decree of 11 July 2002 expressly exempts them. These include earned income, benefits, maintenance payments, movable assets such as savings, and immovable assets: homes, apartments and land. The applicant must provide all information needed for the investigation and signs a declaration to that effect.

For real estate in Belgium, the starting point is the cadastral income. The implementing decree determines how the OCMW derives an amount of resources from it: for built properties, a multiple of the indexed cadastral income is taken into account, with an exemption that increases per dependent child, and for unbuilt properties a different multiple. A home that the applicant occupies themselves is treated differently from a home that they let or leave empty. If the property is let, the actual rent counts in some cases.

More important than the calculation rule is the verification: the OCMW can easily check ownership in Belgium through the data of the FOD Financiën (FPS Finance) and through the Kruispuntbank van de Sociale Zekerheid (Crossroads Bank for Social Security). A concealed home in Belgium usually comes to light.

The same rules apply to real estate abroad: it counts as a resource. The problem is not the rule but establishing the facts. An apartment in Italy, a house in Morocco, a plot in Poland or a home in Türkiye appears in no Belgian register. The OCMW is dependent on the applicant’s declaration and on what it can verify itself.

For foreign real estate, the OCMW must also determine an amount comparable to the cadastral income. In practice, this is done on the basis of the value of the property or the rental yield. This requires a document from the country itself: a land registry extract, a title deed and, where necessary, a valuation by a local appraiser. Without such a document, the OCMW can count nothing and recover nothing.

The social investigation is the responsibility of the social worker. For a part that they cannot carry out themselves, such as consulting a foreign land registry, they can engage a specialised agency. The OCMW remains the controller; the agency works as a processor acting on the OCMW’s instructions, under a data processing agreement.

An investigation always begins with a concrete suspicion in the case: long absences (see the four-week rule for stays abroad), an inheritance, an address abroad, a statement by the client themselves. Three steps then follow:

1. a pre-check: is real estate registered in the client’s name in the registers of the country concerned;
2. in the event of a hit, an in-depth asset investigation: extracts, deeds, co-owners, sworn translation;
3. where necessary, a valuation to determine the amount that counts as a resource.

The OCMW then takes its decision in the council for social welfare, with the report as a document in the file.

In July 2026, on the proposal of the Minister for Social Integration, the federal government decided that, where there are strong indications of living wage fraud, OCMWs may engage specialised investigation firms to check for concealed real estate abroad and the income from it. The firm collects targeted information from local registers and land registries; the social worker assesses and the OCMW decides, with the right to be heard and to appeal preserved. OCMW Antwerp is taking the lead. The legal framework is being worked out; we are following it and will adjust this text as soon as it is published. What exactly we do for OCMWs is described on the page for OCMWs.

Anyone who receives the living wage on the basis of incorrect or incomplete declarations has received that living wage unduly. The Act obliges the OCMW to recover living wage paid unduly, with a limited possibility to waive this on grounds of equity. In the event of fraudulent intent, recovery can go back further than for an ordinary mistake and the OCMW can also suspend the entitlement to the living wage for a period. In addition, the OCMW can file a report with the labour prosecutor’s office (arbeidsauditoraat).

In the case of concealed real estate abroad, the OCMW assesses per case whether there is fraudulent intent, for example where the applicant declared at every review that they owned nothing. The options for recovering the claim abroad as well are described under recovery and seizure.

Sources: wet van 26 mei 2002 betreffende het recht op maatschappelijke integratie (Act of 26 May 2002 on the right to social integration) and koninklijk besluit van 11 juli 2002 (Royal Decree of 11 July 2002), explained in Primabook of the POD Maatschappelijke Integratie (PPS Social Integration); BRUZZ, 6 July 2026 on the federal measure.