All articles · 2026-04-07 · General
What is the official Belgian scale for disability? (and why it determines your income)
You can no longer do your job from one day to the next. Your income stops. You assume your insurance will cover this, but what you…
By Jan Hermans, CEO & founder of Lyff.
What the scale precisely does
The OBSI (Officiële Belgische Schaal voor Invaliditeit) is essentially a reference framework. Doctors and insurers use it to translate a medical situation into a disability percentage. Zero percent means no disability, one hundred percent means full disability.
At first glance, that sounds watertight. Your situation is assessed, a percentage comes out, and that percentage partly determines your benefit. But that's where the tension begins for entrepreneurs. Because that percentage says nothing about your business, your customers, or your income. It only says something about what your body can and cannot do according to medical criteria.
Where it starts to go wrong
Many entrepreneurs start from a simple reasoning: “if I can no longer do my job, my insurance will intervene.” Only, that’s not how the scale views your situation.
The OBSI does not assess professions. It assesses functions. It doesn't look at your specific activity as an entrepreneur, but at general work capacity. What can you physically still do? Which actions remain possible? How severe is the limitation objectively? And that's where a gap arises. Because you think in terms of income and employability. The scale thinks in terms of medical limitation.
The difference that changes everything
Imagine a dentist who loses some functionality in his hand. For his practice, that can be fatal. His profession revolves entirely around precision and motor skills. Economically, his income disappears with the loss of that functionality in his hand. But medically, it is perfectly possible that he retains a significant part of his functions. The scale can translate that into, for example, forty percent disability.
For the insurer, that is a percentage. For the entrepreneur, that is the difference between staying in business or coming to a complete standstill. And these are two totally different realities.
On top of that, there's something few people consider: interpretation. The OBSI is not a mathematical formula that automatically yields a single outcome. It provides a framework, but the interpretation is done by people. Doctors make assessments. Insurers apply that framework within their own context. This means there is room. And where there is room, there is variation due to subjectivity.
Two similar situations can be assessed differently. Not necessarily wrong, but also not identical. And that nuance directly translates into what you do or do not receive from your insurance.
The fallacy almost everyone makes
Entrepreneurs look at their insured amount. They want certainty in figures. A monthly payment, a safety net, a sense of control. But that amount only fully exists on paper. In practice, it is filtered by a percentage. And that percentage comes from a scale that is detached from your concrete economic reality.
That makes the question “for how much am I insured?” actually the wrong question. The better question is: how will my situation be assessed when it really matters? Where is 60% disability not a problem for my business, and where is 10% a problem?
What you should take away from this
The OBSI initially seems like a technical detail. Something for doctors, experts, and insurers. In reality, it forms an important element at the heart of how your protection works. It determines how heavily medical problems weigh financially.
And that happens in a grey area, where medical logic and economic reality do not automatically coincide. Disability is not a black-and-white story. It is an interpretation that is translated into a percentage. And that percentage determines what actually ends up in your account. The question is whether the way your situation will be assessed matches the impact it has on your life as an entrepreneur.
Do you want to review your protection as an entrepreneur? Make an appointment with one of our experts now!
The translation of OBSI to your management company
As CEO of Lyff., I see daily how entrepreneurs are startled by the gap between medical disability and their actual income loss. In my book "Fiscale Shortcuts voor managementvennootschappen" (Tax Shortcuts for Management Companies), I emphasize the fourth pillar: protection. The OBSI scale is a medical instrument, but for your company, it is a financial lever. When an expert determines a percentage based on that scale, it not only determines your private benefit but also influences the tax deductibility of your premiums and the continuity of your company structure.
Take the mechanism of 'turnover insurance' or a guaranteed income policy that you pay through the company. Tax optimization here means that you deduct the premiums as business expenses, but you must understand that the disability benefit often only starts from a threshold of 25 or 33 percent. If the OBSI puts you at 20 percent, you receive zero euros, while your management performance may have fallen by half.
Economic vs. Medical Disability
It is crucial to understand the difference between the medical scale (what your body can do) and economic disability (what you can still earn). In a management company, you are often the sole engine. A hernia may medically mean only 15 percent disability according to the OBSI, but if it prevents you from making site visits or sustaining hours-long consultancy sessions, the economic damage is much greater.
- Medical disability: Based on the OBSI table, it looks at physical integrity loss.
- Economic disability: Looks at the loss of your ability to generate profit in your specific profession.
- Tax impact: Premiums for a policy covering economic disability are often more complex but necessary for asset protection.
A practical example from my book: An IT architect with a management company suffers from severe fatigue due to an autoimmune disease. According to the OBSI, he is 30 percent disabled. However, he can no longer lead his complex projects, causing his company's management fee to drop by 70 percent. Without the right clauses that look beyond the medical scale, the company will struggle financially.
Frequently asked questions
Can I receive a benefit if the OBSI scale indicates less than 25 percent?
For most standard guaranteed income policies for self-employed individuals, the lower limit is 25 percent. If you are below that, no payment will be made. That is why Lyff. often advises looking at specific policies that pay out from as little as 10 percent residual disability, especially for professions where small physical defects have major financial consequences for the company.
Are the benefits based on the OBSI scale taxable?
That depends on the structure. If your company paid the premiums and deducted them as business expenses, then the benefits in the company are taxable as profit. If you then pay this out as salary, you pay personal income tax (personenbelasting). In my book, I explain how to optimally structure this through asset protection (vermogensbescherming) to prevent the tax authorities from taking the largest part of your safety net.
Do you want to know more about how to secure your income? Discover everything about our approach to vermogensbescherming.
Read the full strategy in the book Fiscale Shortcuts voor managementvennootschappen.