Meal allowances

Meal allowances are designed to com­pen­sate for the addi­tion­al costs that a per­son incurs because they are away from their home and first place of work for pro­fes­sion­al rea­sons and there­fore have high­er cater­ing costs com­pared to meals at home.

Practical tip

Although meal allowances can be freely agreed in the con­tract, meal allowances paid should not exceed the respec­tive tax allowances. Oth­er­wise there is a risk that tax and social secu­ri­ty exemp­tion for meal allowances may be with­drawn. If the tem­po­rary employ­ment agency wish­es to reim­burse the employ­ee for high­er amounts, pay­ments exceed­ing the tax allowance should be shown sep­a­rate­ly and taxed as income.

Tax-exempt flat costs

Tax-exempt flat costs are busi­ness trips as follows:

Absence time Flat amount
24 hours EUR 28.00
Min­i­mum of 8 up to 24 hours EUR 14.00
Flat overnight costs EUR 20.00

Reimbursement of costs

Pur­suant to sec. 670 of the Ger­man Civ­il Code (BGB, Bürg­er­lich­es Geset­zbuch), the employ­ee is enti­tled to reim­burse­ments of addi­tion­al expens­es actu­al­ly incurred if

  • the enti­tle­ment was not waived by a contract,
  • the addi­tion­al expens­es exceed the cus­tom­ary amount and
  • the employ­ee proves that such addi­tion­al expens­es were incurred.