Christmas bonus, 13th salary and holiday pay: why so little is left

Why is less left of a Christmas bonus than of a monthly salary?

Because the wage tax on it starts at the top of the year’s income. § 39b(3) EStG has the employer calculate the annual wage tax twice, once without the payment and once with it, and withhold the difference. The one-off payment therefore meets the marginal rate, while the running wage is taxed at a lower average.

The tariff is the reason. Up to €12,348 a year no income tax is due, above that the rate climbs with every further euro, and from €69,879 of taxable income it stands at 42.0%. A special payment always sits at the very top of that stack.

How does the employer calculate wage tax on a one-off payment?

In the four steps § 39b(3) EStG prescribes.

1. The employer establishes the expected annual wage without the one-off payment.
2. The annual wage tax is calculated on that amount.
3. The same calculation is repeated with the one-off payment included.
4. The difference between the two amounts is the wage tax withheld from the one-off payment.

The solidarity surcharge and church tax follow the same calculation, because both sit on the tax it produces. There is no allowance for special payments.

Does a Christmas bonus also carry social contributions?

Yes, in principle in full. A one-off payment of wages carries contributions under § 23a SGB IV, and there is no exemption for Christmas or holiday pay.

It is tested against the pro-rata annual ceiling rather than the monthly one: €69,750 for health and long-term care insurance, €101,400 for pension and unemployment insurance. Anyone who earned below the monthly ceiling through the year has headroom there, and the special payment carries contributions until that headroom is used up.

A special payment made between January and March can be allocated to the last payroll period of the previous year. That March rule in § 23a(4) SGB IV means the payment is tested against the previous year’s largely exhausted ceiling instead of a fresh one.

Do I get the money back with my tax return?

Not automatically. Wage tax is a prepayment and the assessment settles up at year end. Anyone who earned steadily through the year gets little back: the employer’s projection is then already close to what is finally owed.

Substantial over-withholding happens mainly when the expected annual wage was set too high, after a mid-year change of job or a period of unpaid leave. Some employers correct this themselves through the year-end adjustment under § 42b EStG; otherwise the income-tax return does it.

What this calculator does with a one-off payment

Nothing, and it says so. For one-off payments the calculator shows an explicit boundary state instead of a result, because a silent assumption about when the payment falls, how the year has run so far and how much contribution headroom is left would produce a figure nobody can check.

The calculation above assumes a full calendar year with one employer, tax class I in North Rhine-Westphalia with no church-tax liability, statutory health cover at the year’s average supplementary rate, no children, a birth year of 1990 and earnings below both contribution ceilings. These are the assumptions the calculator itself starts with.

Sources

Every rule on this page comes from one of the documents below. Each link goes to the publishing text rather than to a summary of it, and all of them were read on August 16, 2026.