Payroll accounting

The payroll accounting (or wage and salary accounting ) in human resources is a periodic statement of the wages paid in text form created by the employer .

General

It is repeated in the cycle that is provided for in the employment contract , works agreement or collective agreement for wage, salary or salary payments (usually monthly) and serves as evidence of the consideration to be paid by the employer to the employee for the work performed . The periodically recurring payroll is due to the long-term obligation to which an employment relationship belongs. It roughly consists of all payments (gross wages / gross salary) to which the employee is legally or contractually gross and all deductions that are legally or contractually triggered by the payments or independently thereof. The difference between the two is the net pay . The purpose of accounting is to provide information about the payment made so that the employee can check the accounting and see why he is receiving the amount paid out.

Content and tasks

Pay statements are usually very extensive and complex for the reader because they have to meet a large number of legal obligations from a wide variety of legal areas . This includes in particular labor law , trade law , social security law , tax law or contract law . The pay slip must contain all the information required to identify the employer and the employee ( master data ) as well as the relevant information that makes this statement traceable. This includes in particular the company and address of the employer, employer contributions , name, address, date of birth and social security number of the employee, start of the employment relationship , electronic wage tax deduction features (such as wage tax class ), vacation dates or pecuniary benefits .

The tasks of a payroll accounting include, among other things, the determination of the wages taking into account the legal and contractual claims, the calculation of the wage and church tax and the social security contributions or the booking as personnel costs .

Legal issues

Numerous legal bases in the trade regulations (GewO), in SGB ​​IV and SGB ​​V regulate detailed questions on payroll accounting. According to § 108 Abs. 1 GewO, the employee is to be given a statement in text form or in electronic form with a text printout when the wages are paid . This statement must contain at least information about the accounting period and the composition of the pay. With regard to the composition, information about the type and amount of allowances , surcharges , other remuneration , type and amount of deductions, payments on account and advances is required. According to the wording, Section 108 (1) GewO does not constitute a general legal entitlement to a pay slip, but this entitlement only arises when the wages are paid. The wages, the statutory deductions (taxes, social security contributions) and the payment amount are to be calculated and shown in euros in accordance with § 107 GewO .

Payroll accounting appears as a legal term in Section 28a (2a) SGB IV. Pursuant to Section 28f (1) SGB IV, the employer must keep wage documents for every employee, including the wage statements. According to Section 41 (1 ) EStG , the employer has to keep a wage account for every employee and every calendar year at the place of business . The Contribution Procedure Ordinance (BVV) contains numerous formal requirements for keeping wage documents. According to Section 8 BVV, the employer must include a large amount of information about the employees in the pay documents. Reports and proof of contributions from the employer are automatically sent to authorities in electronic form based on Section 1 of the Data Collection and Transfer Ordinance ( DEÜV ) .

According to Section 82 (2) sentence 1 Hs. 1 BetrVG , every employee can request that the calculation and composition of the wages be explained to him. This right of explanation exists even if there is no works council . If there is a works council, the employee can call in a member of the works council (Section 82 (2) sentence 2 BetrVG) who is obliged to maintain secrecy (Section 82 (2) sentence 3 BetrVG).

For the payment of the salary according to § 1 Abs. 2 and 3 BBesG the payee has to indicate a giro account on request ( § 17a BBesG); this also applies to all other employment relationships , because cash payment in the form of a wage packet has become unusual.

The accounting is part of the working papers and is always an obligation to collect , so the employee must collect his accounting from the employer. According to § 242 BGB , the employer can be required in individual cases to send the employee the statement.

economic aspects

Standard software programmed specifically for this purpose in the form of batch processing is used to create the payroll , which either runs in the employer's data processing system or is used by a service provider or tax advisor . The latter options are mainly used by small and medium-sized companies , while large companies use their own data processing in the context of payroll accounting .

Some data payroll flow into the income tax certificate , which by employers according to § 93c AO after expiry of a calendar year electronically to financial authorities is to be transmitted. Collective wage and salary increases are often associated with retroactive effects , so that the payroll accounting can also carry out a corrective retroactive calculation for past payroll accounting.

Remuneration statement

If a pay slip is issued for social security purposes , it is referred to as a pay slip ( Section 108 (3) sentence 1 GewO). The content and procedure of such a remuneration statement are regulated in the Remuneration Statement Ordinance that came into force on July 1, 2013 . Its aim is a “standardized remuneration statement”. A remuneration statement must contain the following information:

1. the name and address of the employer
2. the name, address and date of birth of the employee
3. the employee's insurance number ( Section 147 SGB ​​VI )
4. the date of commencement of employment
5. at the end of employment, the date of the end of employment (in the certificate for the last accounting period)
6. the accounting period and the number of tax days and social security days included
7. The income tax class , including the selected factor, if applicable, the number of child allowances and the characteristics for the church tax deduction and, if applicable, the tax allowance and additional tax amount by year and month as well as the tax identification number
8. the contribution group key and the responsible collection point for the total social security contribution
9. if applicable, the information that a contribution surcharge is levied for childless persons in accordance with Section 55 (3) SGB ​​XI
10. if applicable, the information that the employment relationship is in the sliding zone in accordance with Section 20 (2) of Book Four of the Social Code
11. if applicable, an indication that the job is multiple.

In addition, at least the following remuneration components must be shown in the remuneration statement:

• the description and the amount of all remuneration and deductions, except for the contributions and employer contributions to a voluntary or private health and long-term care insurance as well as the employer's contribution to a professional pension institution, listed individually by type and each with the information whether they relate to the taxable wages, the gross social security pay and the total gross pay and whether these are ongoing or one-off payments or deductions
• the balance of the aforementioned payments and deductions as

a) taxable wages, broken down into current and other earnings and deductions,

b) gross social insurance pay, possibly different for each insurance class and separated according to regular and one-off payments and deductions,

c) Total gross remuneration without separation into regular and one-off payments and deductions;

• the statutory deductions from taxable wages and gross social insurance pay, separated according to regular and one-off gross pay and according to the law of employment promotion

1. the net remuneration as the difference between the total gross remuneration (see above) and the statutory deductions (see above)
2. the employer's contribution to the contributions to a voluntary or private health and long-term care insurance as well as the employer's contribution to a professional pension institution and the total contributions for the employee, for which the employer takes over the payment transactions for the contributions voluntarily
3. the designation and the amount of further remuneration and deductions as well as offsets and withholdings, depending on the type, which do not affect gross remuneration (see above) or which contribute to the total gross remuneration, but are not paid to the employee
4. the payment amount as the balance of the net remuneration (see above) and the amounts according to numbers 5 and 6.

Example of a pay slip / certificate

Payroll in an insurance company in 1976

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media archive

Laufende Bezüge (Gehalt, Wochenlohn, Monatslohn und Stundenlohn)
+ geldwerte Vorteile/Sachbezüge
+ Vermögenswirksame Leistungen des Arbeitgebers
+ betriebliche Altersvorsorge (Leistungen des Arbeitgebers)
= Gesamtbrutto
- Betriebliche Altersvorsorge (sozialversicherungsfreie Beträge)
= Sozialversicherungsbrutto (das beitragspflichtige Arbeitsentgelt)
- Steuerfreibeträge
- Betriebliche Altersvorsorge (steuerfreier Betrag, soweit nicht schon vom Sozialversicherungsbrutto abgezogen)
= Steuerbrutto (das steuerpflichtige Arbeitsentgelt)
- Lohnsteuer
- Kirchensteuer von der Lohnsteuer
- Solidaritätszuschlag von der Lohnsteuer
- Krankenversicherung Arbeitnehmer-Anteil
- Rentenversicherung Arbeitnehmer-Anteil
- Arbeitslosenversicherung Arbeitnehmer-Anteil
- Pflegeversicherung Arbeitnehmer-Anteil
- Beitragszuschlag Pflegeversicherung
= Nettoarbeitsentgelt nach Abzug der Steuern und Pflichtbeiträge vom Gesamtbrutto
- Sachbezüge
- Vermögenswirksame Leistungen des Arbeitnehmers
- Persönliche Abzüge (Vorschuss, Pfändung, Tilgung Arbeitgeberdarlehen)
+ Steuer- und sozialversicherungsfreie Aufwandsentschädigungen
= Auszahlungsbetrag / Überweisung an den Arbeitnehmer

Further information is only permitted if it is provided for in a collective or employment agreement, a works agreement or another statutory provision.

Some large companies offer their employees the opportunity to call up and print out their remuneration statements themselves via Employee Self Service, ESS for short (loosely translated: employee self-service, see also Self-Service Technologies).

International

Unlike in Germany, the Swiss payroll does not include a wage tax deduction as an advance payment on the income tax due, because the Swiss income tax is only due after the employee's tax return based on the tax assessment ("assessment decision" or "tax decision"). Therefore - with the same gross earnings - the net salaries in Switzerland are higher than in Germany.

As a result of the 2015 Labor Law Amendment Act , all employees in Austria must receive a “wage or salary slip” in writing since January 2016 , which is also possible in electronic form (Section 2f Employment Contract Law Amendment Act). Since there is a legal claim to this, the employee can sue the employer if necessary. How the payroll should look like is not regulated. In any case, the Austrian wage tax is taken into account as a deduction in the payroll as in Germany. The wage tax certificate is called the annual wage slip , which is the basis of the employee tax assessment .

In Anglo-Saxon countries, the payroll ( English payroll statement or simply English payroll ) is a payroll; “Payroll” can also be understood as a designation for the entire staff or the entire personnel costs .

Trivia

Pay slip from 1966

The old designation “pay slip” comes from the early days of payroll accounting. The complete accounting was only done on a small strip of paper that was made as a copy in the payroll accounting.

The term is still used in some German-speaking regions, such as South Tyrol, for payroll accounting.

Another form of early payroll accounting took place on the outside of pay bags .

See also

• Wages + salaries

literature

• Thomas Cook: Labor in practice from A- Z . Mecke, 2008, ISBN 978-3-936617-81-8 , pp. 84 .
• Claus-Jürgen Conrad: quick introduction to wage and salary accounting . Haufe, 2008, ISBN 978-3-448-08812-0 .
• Alexander Enderes: The basics of payroll 2009 . Datakontext-Fachverlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-89577-542-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ BAG, judgment of July 12, 2006, Az .: 5 AZR 646/05 - Rn. 15 = BAGE 119, 62
2. ↑ Claus-Jürgen Conrad, Payroll accounting 2013 , 2013, p. 435 ff.
3. ↑ Markus Stier, 101 of the payroll accounting , 2018, p. 31 f.
4. ↑ BAG, judgment of March 8, 1995, Az .: 5 AZR 848/93 with regard to the certificate as a working paper; = BAGE 79, 258
5. ↑ Lutz Irgel (Ed.), Gabler's Wirtschaftswissen für Praktiker , 1980, p. 155
6. ↑ Text of the Remuneration Certificate Ordinance - EBV of December 19, 2012 ( Federal Law Gazette I p. 2712 )

Please note the information on legal issues!