Value added in Belgian annual accounts: definition, formula and value added per FTE
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The short answer
Value added (toegevoegde waarde in Dutch) is what a company adds to the goods and services it buys: its operating income minus its purchases of goods, materials and services. It is the money that pays staff, depreciation, interest, tax and profit. Belgian annual accounts have no value added line. On the full model, the National Bank calculates gross value added as codes 70 + 71 + 72 + 74, minus operating subsidies (740), minus purchases (60) and services and other goods (61). For the abbreviated and micro models it uses an estimate: gross margin (9900) minus non-recurring operating income (76A). Divide by the average number of employees in FTE (code 9087, or 1003 on the micro model) and you get value added per FTE, the National Bank's productivity ratio. None of this is about value added tax.
The formulas below come from the National Bank's definitions of ratios for companies and Eurostat's national accounts glossary, and the Trends Gazellen criteria from trendsgazellen.be, all read on 1 October 2026. This is general information, not accounting advice.
Not value added tax
In Dutch the words are the same as in btw, the belasting over de toegevoegde waarde, which is why searches mix the two. VAT is a tax a business charges its customers and passes on to the state; whether a company has to charge it is explained in who is VAT-liable in Belgium. Value added as a company metric is an economic measure calculated from the income statement. The full model reports VAT separately, in codes 9145 and 9146, and neither feeds value added.
It is the same idea as behind GDP: Eurostat defines gross value added as output minus intermediate consumption, and the sum over all sectors, plus taxes minus subsidies on products, gives gross domestic product.
The National Bank's formula
Which version you can use depends on the model the company files, which you see when you look up the annual accounts in Consult.
Code | Item | Full model | Abbreviated and micro model |
|---|---|---|---|
70 | Turnover | Added | Inside gross margin (9900) |
71 | Change in work in progress, finished goods and orders in progress | Added or deducted | Inside gross margin |
72 | Produced fixed assets | Added | Inside gross margin |
74 | Other operating income | Added | Inside gross margin |
740 | Operating subsidies and compensatory amounts from public authorities | Deducted | Not shown separately, so it stays in |
60 | Goods for resale, raw materials and consumables | Deducted | Inside gross margin |
61 | Services and other goods | Deducted | Inside gross margin |
76A | Non-recurring operating income | Not included | Deducted from gross margin |
So on the abbreviated and micro models, the National Bank's estimate is simply value added = 9900 minus 76A. Two details separate it from the exact figure. Non-recurring operating income stays out of both, so a one-off gain on selling a building does not inflate value added. Operating subsidies are removed on the full model, but on the smaller models they sit inside gross margin and cannot be taken out, so for a company with large operating subsidies the estimate runs higher than the exact figure would.
How value added differs from turnover and gross margin
Measure | Codes | What it shows |
|---|---|---|
Turnover | 70 | Everything invoiced, including goods and services bought in and passed on. Optional on the abbreviated and micro models. |
Gross margin | 9900 | Operating income minus purchases, including one-off operating income. The first line of the smaller models. |
Value added | 9900 minus 76A, or 70 + 71 + 72 + 74 minus 740, 60 and 61 | The recurring value the company's own people and assets create |
EBITDA | 9901 + 630 + 631/4 + 635/8 | What is left after staff costs and other operating costs |
Turnover says how much passes through a company; value added says how much it creates itself. An illustrative wholesaler that sells 12 million euros of goods and spends 10.8 million on goods and services adds 1.2 million euros of value. A software company with 4.1 million euros turnover and few purchases can add 2.3 million. On turnover the wholesaler looks three times bigger; on value added the software company is almost twice its size.
For a small company, value added and recurring gross margin are the same number, which is why gross margin in Belgian annual accounts recommends subtracting 76A. What differs is the reading: gross margin is a budget for the costs below it, value added is output, to be set against the people who produce it. Subtract staff costs (62) and other operating costs (640/8) from recurring value added and you are at roughly recurring EBITDA, worked out in how to calculate EBITDA from Belgian annual accounts.
Value added per FTE as a productivity measure
The National Bank's ratio "value added per employee" divides gross value added by the average number of employees in full-time equivalents: code 9087 on the full and abbreviated models, code 1003 on the micro model. It only calculates the ratio when the financial year lasts 12 months and the average FTE is above zero. The FTE figure comes from the social balance sheet, filed by every company with staff.
Set it against staff cost per FTE. Staff costs (62) divided by the same FTE give the cost of one employee. The gap between the two is what each person leaves for depreciation, interest, tax and profit. The National Bank tracks the same relation as a share: staff costs divided by value added.
Compare within a sector. Capital-heavy activities produce more value added per person than labour-heavy ones, so a cleaning company and a chemicals plant do not compare. The National Bank publishes sector statistics built from the filed accounts.
Check who is not counted. Agency workers and directors who invoice through their own company are booked under services (61). Their cost lowers value added, but they are not in the FTE figure, so a company that leans on them can look more or less productive than it is.
Follow the trend. Value added growing faster than FTE means each person produces more. FTE growing faster than value added means the company is hiring ahead of output, or losing productivity.
Value added shows what a company creates. Whether that turns into a return for its shareholders is the question of profitability ratios such as return on equity.
Value added in rankings: the Trends Gazellen
Value added is the size measure behind the Trends Gazellen, the yearly ranking of fast-growing Belgian companies. Trends Business Information screens every company that files accounts with the National Bank, sorts them into small (value added under 1 million euros), medium (1 to 5 million euros) and large (over 5 million euros), and ranks growth in value added, staff and cash flow over the last five financial years. Trends does not publish the exact value added formula it applies. How the Trends Gazellen work and how to prospect them covers the rest.
A worked example
An illustrative IT services company in Antwerp files the abbreviated model and does not publish turnover. Four years of its filings show:
Year | Gross margin 9900 (euros) | Of which 76A (euros) | Value added (euros) | Average FTE 9087 | Value added per FTE (euros) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2021 | 1,480,000 | - | 1,480,000 | 18.5 | 80,000 |
2022 | 1,690,000 | 10,000 | 1,680,000 | 20.0 | 84,000 |
2023 | 1,955,000 | - | 1,955,000 | 23.0 | 85,000 |
2024 | 2,350,000 | 50,000 | 2,300,000 | 25.0 | 92,000 |
From 2021 to 2024 value added rose by 820,000 euros, or 55%, while FTE rose by 6.5, or 35%. Value added per FTE went from 80,000 to 92,000 euros, up 15%: the company grew and each person produced more. In 2024 staff costs were 1,725,000 euros, 75% of value added and 69,000 euros per FTE, so each FTE left about 23,000 euros for depreciation, interest, tax and profit. The 50,000 euros from selling company cars in 2024 stays out. With 2.3 million euros of value added the company would fall in the Trends medium class, although Trends applies its own formula.
Four filings per company add up fast across a list. Bizzy's legal entity records show gross margin for four financial years side by side, with year-on-year change, next to average FTE, EBITDA and the filed PDF for each year, all from the accounts filed with the National Bank. Dividing gross margin by FTE gives a first read in seconds; open the PDF for any year where non-recurring income needs taking out.
Frequently asked questions
What is value added for a company? Operating income minus purchases of goods, materials and services. On the full model the National Bank calculates it as 70 + 71 + 72 + 74 minus 740, 60 and 61; on the abbreviated and micro models it estimates it as gross margin (9900) minus non-recurring operating income (76A).
Is toegevoegde waarde the same as btw? No. Btw (VAT) is a tax on sales. Toegevoegde waarde as a company metric is the value a company creates, calculated from its income statement.
How do you calculate value added per employee? Divide value added by the average number of employees in FTE: code 9087 on the full and abbreviated models, code 1003 on the micro model. The National Bank only uses financial years of 12 months.
Is value added the same as gross margin? Almost, for small companies: the estimate is gross margin minus non-recurring operating income. On the full model operating subsidies are also taken out, and there is no gross margin line to start from.
Photo: the church of Saint Dympna in Geel, Sally V, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons