Payslips & the Entgeltbescheinigung

The payslip duty: § 108 GewO

The German payslip obligation sits in the Gewerbeordnung. Section 108(1) GewO: „Dem Arbeitnehmer ist bei Zahlung des Arbeitsentgelts eine Abrechnung in Textform zu erteilen.“ — "the employee is to be given, when the remuneration is paid, a statement in text form" (our rendering). This is an automatic duty at each payment, not something the employee has to request.

The statute sets the floor for content: the statement must show at least the pay period (Abrechnungszeitraum) and the composition of the pay — in particular the type and amount of supplements (Zuschläge), allowances (Zulagen), other remuneration, the type and amount of deductions, and any instalment payments or advances (§ 108(1) GewO).

There is one built-in relief: the duty lapses when nothing has changed against the last proper statement (§ 108(2) GewO) — for example, an identical salary month with identical deductions. And under § 108(3) GewO the employee can additionally request a further Entgeltbescheinigung for other purposes, limited to the § 108(1) details.

What must be on it: the Entgeltbescheinigungsverordnung

Section 108(3) GewO empowers the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS) to standardise the certificate, which it did in the Entgeltbescheinigungsverordnung (EntgBV, officially abbreviated EBV) — a certificate that can be used for social-security purposes and before the social and family courts. Under § 2 EntgBV, employees receive it in text form for every pay period, together with the pay statement — in practice, German payroll software produces one document that is both.

Per § 1(1) EntgBV, the certificate must identify the employment (our rendering of the fetched list):

• The employer's name and address
• The employee's name, address and date of birth
• The employee's social-insurance number (Versicherungsnummer, § 147 SGB VI)
• The date employment began — and, on the certificate for the final pay period, the date it ended
• The pay period certified, with the number of tax days and social-insurance days it contains
• The tax attributes — tax class (including any chosen factor), number of child allowances (Kinderfreibeträge), church-tax attributes, any tax allowances or add-back amounts by year and month, and the tax identification number
• The contribution-group key (Beitragsgruppenschlüssel) and the responsible collection agency (Einzugsstelle) for the total social-insurance contribution
• Where applicable: that the childless surcharge in long-term-care insurance is levied (§ 55(3) SGB XI), that the job is in the transition zone (Übergangsbereich, § 20(2) SGB IV), or that it is a multiple employment

And per § 1(2) EntgBV, it must present the pay itself:

• Every payment and deduction itemised by type and amount, each flagged for whether it affects taxable pay, social-insurance gross and total gross, and whether it is recurring or one-off
• The resulting balances: taxable pay, social-insurance gross (per branch where they differ), total gross, and flat-rate-taxed items shown separately by legal basis
• The statutory deductions: wage tax, church tax and solidarity surcharge, plus the employee contributions to health, pension and long-term-care insurance and to unemployment insurance
• The net pay — total gross minus the statutory deductions
• Any employer subsidy to voluntary or private health and long-term-care insurance, and employer amounts to professional pension schemes (berufsständische Versorgung)
• Other items that don't move a gross figure — or that count toward gross but aren't paid out — each shown individually
• The final payout amount (Auszahlungsbetrag)

Two procedural details worth knowing: the document must be marked as a certificate under § 108(3) sentence 1 GewO (§ 1(4) EntgBV); and when statements are skipped because nothing changed, the next certificate must note which periods were skipped, so the employee holds a continuous record (§ 2(1) EntgBV). Employees may also black out the church-tax attribute on their certificate (§ 2(2) EntgBV).

Electronic payslips

Section 108 GewO requires text form (Textform) — deliberately not the stricter written form with a handwritten signature. Text form is defined in § 126b BGB: „…muss eine lesbare Erklärung, in der die Person des Erklärenden genannt ist, auf einem dauerhaften Datenträger abgegeben werden.“ — "a readable declaration naming the person making it must be given on a durable medium" (our rendering). A durable medium is one the recipient can keep or store so the declaration stays accessible for an appropriate period, and that reproduces it unchanged.

That means a payslip does not have to be paper: a PDF delivered by email or made available for download can satisfy § 108 GewO, provided the employee can genuinely retrieve, save and re-open it unchanged. View-only access that the employee cannot store is the weak spot to avoid, and purely digital delivery assumes every employee actually has access — if part of your workforce doesn't, provide another route.

Retention 1 — tax: the Lohnkonto, AO periods

On the tax side, the anchor record is the wage account (Lohnkonto): under § 41 EStG the employer must keep one per employee, per calendar year, at the place of the payroll Betriebsstätte, recording the wage-tax deduction attributes and, at every wage payment, the type and amount of pay (including tax-free items) and the wage tax withheld. Its retention period is explicit: „Die Lohnkonten sind bis zum Ablauf des sechsten Kalenderjahres, das auf die zuletzt eingetragene Lohnzahlung folgt, aufzubewahren.“ — wage accounts must be kept until the end of the sixth calendar year after the year of the last recorded wage payment (our rendering).

Around the Lohnkonto sit the general tax-retention rules of § 147 AO, by document class:

• Ten years — books and records, inventories, annual financial statements, management reports, the opening balance sheet and the organisational documents needed to understand them
• Eight years — booking vouchers (Buchungsbelege), which is where much payroll paper lands (payroll journals and postings evidencing wage bookings). This period was recently reduced from ten years by bureaucracy-relief legislation — the current text of § 147(3) AO says eight
• Six years — other documents relevant to taxation, including received and sent commercial correspondence

Two mechanics apply across all classes: the clock starts at the end of the calendar year in which the document arose or the last entry was made (§ 147(4) AO), and the period does not expire while the documents still matter for taxes whose assessment period is open (§ 147(3) AO). Digital storage is expressly allowed if it meets proper-bookkeeping principles and the data stay available, readable and machine-analysable for the whole period (§ 147(2) AO).

Retention 2 — social insurance: § 28f SGB IV

The social-insurance clock works differently — it is anchored to the employer audit, not to a fixed year count. Under § 28f(1) SGB IV the employer must keep pay records (Entgeltunterlagen) for every employee, separated by calendar year, in German, and within Germany, and retain them in an orderly manner „bis zum Ablauf des auf die letzte Prüfung (§ 28p) folgenden Kalenderjahres“ — "until the end of the calendar year following the last audit" (our rendering). The same rule covers the contribution settlements and contribution statements (Beitragsabrechnungen, Beitragsnachweise).

The audit in question is the Betriebsprüfung by the pension-insurance institutions (Deutsche Rentenversicherung), which by § 28p SGB IV takes place at least every four years — so in practice the SV retention window is roughly five to six years, but it only closes after the auditors have been through. An employer without a seat in Germany must appoint an authorised representative in Germany to meet these record duties (§ 28f(1b) SGB IV).

Side-note: the DEÜV reporting thread

The same identifiers that appear on the Entgeltbescheinigung — the insurance number, the contribution-group key, the Einzugsstelle — are the ones the employer reports through the DEÜV (Datenerfassungs- und -übermittlungsverordnung), the regulation governing data reporting to the social-insurance institutions. A new hire must be registered with the first following payroll run, at the latest six weeks after employment begins (§ 6 DEÜV); a leaver is de-registered with the next payroll run (§ 8 DEÜV); and a Jahresmeldung (annual report) is due for continuing employees (§ 10 DEÜV). Personal details must be taken from official documents, and reports carry the employee's health fund's company number (§ 5 DEÜV). The payslip, the pay records and the DEÜV reports are three outputs of one data set — which is why they should come from one calculation.

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