Employers can support their employees in their exercising and cultural activities and deduct the full expenses in their income taxation. The benefit generated is tax-free to the employee if the benefit can be deemed normal and reasonable. It is possible to support an employee’s independent exercise and cultural activities up to the sum of €400.00 per employee per calendar year.

You can offer lunch to your employees as a fringe benefit or as a deduction.

Employer: Benefit added to salary. The employer pays the nominal value for the benefit, but this payment is tax-deductible. Processed as salary in withholding taxation and in payroll at 75%.

Employee: 75% of the benefit is taxable earned income according to the employee’s individual tax rate. The employer pays for the benefit; the employee only pays the tax. A fringe benefit paid in addition to salary also accrues pension.

Employer: The taxable value of the lunch benefit, 75%, will be deducted from the employee’s salary. The employer pays the difference between the nominal value and the taxable value, but this payment is tax-deductible.

Employee: The employee pays the taxable value of the lunch benefit, 75%; for example, the employee pays €7.50 for a €10.00 lunch voucher. The employer can deduct this amount from an employee’s salary.

It is possible to offer the commute benefit on top of the salary or as part of the current salary. Commute benefit is tax-free up to 3400 euros per year.

The massage benefit is a tax-free benefit when it is limited at 400 euros per year. A massage saldo can be provided for 400 euros per employee per year. The massage saldo can be used for sports and classic massages, but not for spa services, for example. The massage saldo can also be used to pay for physiotherapy services if the employer has included it in the massage benefit.

The tax administration has tightened its policy on delimiting where the massage saldo can be used. The tax exemption requires the employee to use the massage benefit only at massage and physiotherapy venues selected by the employer. Therefore, subscribers, ie employers, must choose which service providers can used with massage benefit and make separate agreements with them.

The employee can check the valid agreements through their own account from the online service, View contracts section.

The employer adds massage saldo to the employee’s Smartum account. After that, the employee selects a suitable venue and time and pays for the massage with the massage saldo. If the price is in excess of the saldo, the employee pays the difference.
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SmartumPay application monitors automatically, that the annual usage limit, ruled by tax authorities, won't exceed.

If the employees are expected to pay their own contribution for the benefits, it can be done by retaining the contribution from the salary OR by using OwnWallet feature in SmartumPay application.

The contribution can be paid in parts, the minimum transfer is 50 euros. The amount of the contribution is taken into account automatically when the payment is made, and the contribution is always mentioned in the receipt in OwnWallet. This is ruled by the tax administration.

If an employment relationship ends and the benefits are no longer available for the employee, the money in OwnWallet can be used normally for example in lunch payments. After the deposit has been made to the account, it is not possible to reverse.

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