6. Fiscal breaks

In Belgium, almost all WISEs are associations and all of them are “non-profit” legal entities, meaning VZW (vereniging zonder winstoogmerk) in Dutch and ASBL (association sans but lucrative) in French. The VZW/ASBL form allow for the development of commercial activities, provided that these activities are subordinated to the organisation’s social mission and that all WISEs’ profits must be reinvested into the organisation’s social mission (asset lock scheme). In this way, social responsibility is built into WISEs by law (Huybrechts & Nyssens 2020).