ASCEND ACCOUNTANT

Ascend Accountant is an accounting and human resources office on Avenue Georges Leclercq in Ganshoren, near Brussels West station. The firm is accredited with the ITAA under number 52.362.014 as a tax accountant, and also operates as a payroll office. That dual role is the office's defining feature: accounting and payroll are handled under one roof.

The payroll strand is set out down to the formalities: drawing up contracts, issuing payslips, immediate employment declarations, social risk declarations and DmfA filings, withholding tax returns and 281 tax forms. For a self-employed person hiring a first employee, the difference is concrete: instead of coordinating an accountant and a separate payroll office, they deal with a single contact, which avoids gaps between the payslip and the accounting entry.

The accounting strand covers day-to-day bookkeeping, cost accounting, preparation of the annual accounts and advice on accounting and administrative organisation. Tax work covers monthly or quarterly VAT returns, personal income tax and corporate income tax returns, and tax optimisation.

A third strand supports company formation: advice on incorporation, help drafting the financial plan, registration with the enterprise register and for VAT, project study and assistance with company law compliance. To that is added a business centre, uncommon at an accounting firm: company domiciliation at the office, mail handling and forwarding by email, and the use of an office or meeting room. For a foreign company starting an activity in Belgium, or a self-employed person without premises, that is a practical entry point.

The firm publishes an explicit list of sectors it works in: hospitality, retail, construction, medical and paramedical practice, IT and taxi and transport. That statement is rare and useful: each of those sectors has its own regimes, from the hospitality flat rate to the 6 per cent VAT rate in construction and the exemption of medical services, and an office claiming them commits to rules that must be known to be applied correctly.

In practice, an online client area is provided at no extra cost for filing and consulting documents. The firm does ask for a clear choice: the books are kept either entirely on paper or entirely in digital form, with no mixing. That rule has a logic, namely avoiding duplicate documents and items lost between two channels. The tools named are Octopus and Dext. The client base brings together self-employed people and companies in the western outskirts of Brussels.