Meals and accommodation: the fixed values of the SvEV

A country inn in the Allgäu hires two waiting staff for the summer season. Both eat three times a day in the staff kitchen and share a room under the roof. The owner budgets with the agreed wage and overlooks that breakfast, lunch and a bed are pay as well. Under the German social insurance remuneration ordinance, the meals alone count for 345 € a month, before the room has even been valued.

Why the legislator sets fixed values

An employer who provides food or a place to sleep pays part of the wage in something other than money. Tax law and contribution law still treat this advantage as income. The only open question is the amount at which it enters the payroll, because a breakfast from the staff kitchen carries no price tag.

As a rule, a benefit in kind is measured by what it normally costs at the place where it is supplied, after customary discounts. For board and lodging this yardstick would be laborious. Every business would have to find out what a comparable lunch costs nearby, and every auditor might reach a different result.

That is why a statutory ordinance sets fixed amounts. The Sozialversicherungsentgeltverordnung, abbreviated SvEV, is issued on the basis of § 17 (1) sentence 1 no. 4 of Book IV of the Social Code. Its § 2 determines how many euros meals, accommodation and a flat count for as remuneration.

The values are deliberately flat. They ask neither whether the food comes from a large canteen or a small hotel kitchen, nor whether the room has a balcony. That is what makes them easy to handle for payroll. At the same time they draw a line: whoever provides a self-contained flat leaves the fixed amounts behind.

The ordinance text contains no year. It is amended when new amounts apply, and gesetze-im-internet.de always shows the version in force. This course relies on the wording the portal delivered in September 2026. For a later payroll year, the amounts must be looked up again.

The meal values and their three meals

Subsection 1 sets the value of full board at 345 euros a month. The ordinance itself breaks this amount down: 71 euros are attributed to breakfast and 137 euros each to lunch and dinner. Added together, the three partial values give exactly the total amount.

The breakdown is not a mere explanation. Many businesses do not provide all three meals, but perhaps only a lunch or only breakfast at the hotel. In that case only the partial value of the meal actually made available is used. The remainder of the monthly amount plays no part.

The daily values in the table follow from subsection 6, explained further below. In everyday terms: a single lunch that the business provides on a working day counts for 4.57 euros. A breakfast counts for 2.37 euros, and a full day of board for 11.50 euros.

The wording refers to meals that are made available. For payroll this means: first record which meals are agreed and offered, then link each of them to its partial value. A breakfast room that only opens on weekdays creates no value at the weekend.

When the family eats too

Subsection 2 covers a situation found in farming, hospitality and private households: the employer also feeds relatives of the employee who do not work for him. The values from subsection 1 then rise for each of these relatives by a percentage that is graded by age.

Age is not adjusted continuously. What counts is the age in the first payroll period of the calendar year. A child who turns seven in March therefore stays in the 30 percent band for the whole year and only moves to the next band with the first payroll of the following year.

Where both spouses work for the same employer, the increase for feeding the children is neither doubled nor charged to only one of them. The ordinance splits it in half, so that each spouse carries half of the increase in his or her own payroll.

An example shows the scale. A cook receives full board, as do her husband, who works elsewhere, and her ten-year-old son. The base value of 345 euros is increased by 100 percent for the husband and 40 percent for the son, that is 345 and 138 euros. The amount to use is 828 euros a month.

The increase attaches only to meals. For accommodation the ordinance knows no comparable increase. If the family lives on the premises as well, the real question is whether there is already a flat, to be valued at the local rent; the second module deals with that.

Accommodation and its reductions

For accommodation, subsection 3 sets a monthly value of 285 euros. This means a sleeping place or room, not a complete flat; the flat has its own yardstick in subsection 4. The base value is reduced in three situations, which the wording lists exhaustively.

First, the value falls by 15 percent if the employee is taken into the employer's household or housed in shared accommodation. Second, the reduction is also 15 percent for young people up to their 18th birthday and for apprentices, whatever their age.

Third, the reduction depends on the number of employees in the room. If two employees share the accommodation, the value falls by 40 percent. With three employees it is 50 percent, with more than three 60 percent. A double room therefore counts for 171 euros per person instead of 285 euros.

The reductions apply to the value under sentence 1, that is to the 285 euros. A seventeen-year-old apprentice in a single room therefore comes to 242.25 euros a month. Three harvest workers who share one room are each valued at 142.50 euros.

How several reductions interact, for instance for an apprentice in a multi-bed room, is not stated expressly in the ordinance. Anyone processing this case should record the calculation in writing and, in case of doubt, ask the tax office of the establishment and the collecting agency rather than simply assume a combination.

Subsection 3 also contains a safety valve. If valuing the accommodation at the fixed amount would be inequitable in the individual case, the local rent may be used instead. The ordinance gives no examples. The exception is reserved for cases in which the flat amount clearly does not fit the accommodation.

Days instead of months: the one-thirtieth rule

Not every employment fills a whole month. Someone who starts on the 17th or receives meals only on some days needs a daily value. Subsection 6 uses one thirtieth of the monthly values for each day, regardless of whether the calendar month has 28, 30 or 31 days.

The percentages of subsections 2 and 3 are applied to the daily value, not to the monthly value. First the thirtieth is formed, then the increase or reduction is calculated. With round amounts the order changes little, with uneven daily values it can decide a cent.

Calculations use two decimal places. The second place is raised by one if the third place shows a digit from 5 to 9. So 71 divided by 30, which is 2.3666, becomes 2.37 euros. And 137 divided by 30 becomes 4.57 euros.

An example: a temporary worker stays twelve days in a double room provided by the business. The daily value of accommodation is 9.50 euros. Reduced by 40 percent, 5.70 euros per day remain. For the twelve days, 68.40 euros are to be recorded as a benefit in kind.

The one-thirtieth rule only applies to periods shorter than a month. If the employee receives board or lodging for the whole calendar month, the monthly value applies, even if the month has 31 days. Adding up thirty-one daily values in July therefore overstates the benefit.

What the employee pays

Businesses often ask for a contribution, such as a fixed amount for the room or a price per meal. Subsection 5 deals with this briefly: only the difference between the agreed price and the value that would apply if the benefit were free is added to remuneration.

If an employee pays 3 euros for her lunch, an advantage of 1.57 euros per meal remains. If she pays 4.57 euros or more, there is no benefit in kind, because the agreed price reaches the official value. A higher price does not lead to a deduction from the rest of the pay.

What matters is that the contribution is actually paid, in cash, by transfer or by withholding it from net pay. Such a withholding reduces the benefit in kind, not gross pay. The payslip should therefore show the official value, the contribution and the remaining advantage separately.

The daily value rule also covers the contribution. Subsection 6 expressly refers to the values under subsections 1 to 5. For a part month, one thirtieth of the difference is therefore used for each day, not the full monthly value minus an estimated share.

• Which benefit is provided: meal, accommodation or flat?
• Which value applies: monthly value or daily value under the one-thirtieth rule?
• Which increases for relatives or reductions for accommodation apply?
• What does the employee contribute, and how much advantage remains?

The same values for wage tax

The SvEV is an ordinance of contribution law. That it also governs wage tax withholding is ordered by the Income Tax Act itself. Under § 8 (2) sentence 6 EStG, the values fixed in this ordinance are decisive where such values have been set for an employee's benefits in kind.

Sentence 7 extends this to taxpayers who are not subject to compulsory statutory pension insurance. Even someone outside the pension scheme for contribution purposes is therefore valued with the same amounts as the rest of the workforce. For board and lodging, a single amount usually serves for tax and contributions.

A limit that many know from practice does not help here, however. The monthly exemption limit of 50 euros under § 8 (2) sentence 11 EStG only covers benefits valued under sentence 1 at the usual final price. Board and lodging at the official value do not fall under it.

If a business gives an employee ten free lunches a month, it may not leave the 45.70 euros untaxed by pointing to the 50 euro limit. The amount is subject to tax and contributions unless it is taxed at a flat rate under the canteen rules explained in the second module.

For apprentices, an employment law barrier is added. Under § 17 (6) of the Vocational Training Act, benefits in kind may be offset against training pay at the official values, but at most up to 75 percent of gross training pay. The details are in the course on apprentices.