The meal allowance, also known as food subsidy or meal subsidy, is a voluntary benefit provided by your employer to help cover the costs of your meals during workdays. Whether you're in the office, working from home, or on the go – this benefit is designed to ensure you're well-nourished, can maintain a healthy diet, and have the energy you need for your tasks. While this was traditionally implemented through workplace cafeterias or paper-based meal vouchers, today's flexible digital solutions dominate the scene, giving you much more freedom in choosing your lunch or snacks. It's a highly popular and valued benefit that promotes well-being while noticeably reducing your daily expenses.
What makes meal allowances particularly appealing is their favorable tax treatment in Germany. Under certain conditions, employers can subsidize their employees' meals without incurring any income tax or social security contributions for you. The rules (as of April 2025, based on the anticipated official benefit-in-kind value for meals) typically work as follows:
- Per working day, one meal (typically lunch) can be covered up to€7.23...will receive tax benefits. This amount is composed of the official in-kind benefit value for lunch (expected to be 4.13 euros for 2025) and an additional tax-free allowance of up to...€3.10I notice that you haven't provided any German text to translate. Could you please share the German text you'd like me to translate into English? Once you do, I'll help you with a natural and fluent translation that captures the original meaning, tone, and intention.
- To ensure that the subsidy of up to €3.10 remains completely tax-free and exempt from social security contributions, you as an employee must contribute at least the statutory meal allowance value (which is €4.13) towards your meal.
- Alternatively, the employer can choose to cover the full amount of up to €7.23. However, in this case, they must pay a flat tax rate of 25% on the portion that counts as a benefit in kind (€4.13) according to §40 paragraph 2 sentence 1 number 1 of the Income Tax Act. The additional subsidy of up to €3.10 beyond that amount still remains tax-free for you.
Moderndigital meal allowance systemsDigital benefit solutions, like those offered by providers such as HelloBonnie, make it incredibly easy to comply with these rules and utilize the meal allowance. Instead of dealing with paper receipts, you can simply submit your meal receipts (from supermarkets, restaurants, bakeries, delivery services, etc.) through an app (for example, by taking a photo), or you can use a special benefit card like the HelloBonnie Smartcard to directly pay for your meals at participating partners. The system verifies the receipts or transactions and reimburses you the eligible allowance within your budget – often up to the maximum tax-optimized daily amount.
A digital meal allowance thus offers numerous benefits. You benefit from asignificant financial savingswith your daily food expenses and enjoymaximum flexibilitysince you decide for yourself where and what you eat. The handling issimple and convenientvia app or card. For employers, it's a highly valued benefit forImproving Employee Satisfaction and RetentionThe provided German text fragment ", der zudem die" appears to be incomplete - it's just a partial phrase that translates roughly to ", who/which additionally the". Without more context or a complete sentence, I cannot provide a natural and meaningful translation that preserves the original meaning and intention. Please provide the complete sentence or passage for an accurate translation.Health and Productivitypromotes. Thanks to digital solutions, theadministrative effort/overhead is minimaland theLegal certaintyguaranteed. HelloBonnie allows you to seamlessly integrate meal allowances into a comprehensive package of flexible benefits, enabling you to conveniently manage and use all your additional benefits through a single platform and card.