Meal contribution

What it means

In Slovak practice the term has two meanings. The first is the employer’s mandatory contribution to employee meals, provided as food, vouchers or a cash allowance.

The second is the meal allowance during a business trip, which forms part of travel allowances and whose rates are set by ministerial decree according to the length of the trip and the country.

The meal contribution is not a voluntary perk the company could swap for something else. Alongside it the employer may also subsidise meals from the social fund, but that has its own source, its own rules and its own tax treatment. Payroll therefore keeps the two amounts separate, even though the employee sees them as a single contribution.

How it works in practice

Employees may choose between a voucher and the cash allowance where the employer does not provide meals in its own facility. Within the statutory scope the contribution is a deductible cost and is not taxable income for the employee.

The payroll system tracks entitlement by days worked and excludes days where none arises - a business trip, for instance, where the meal allowance under the travel allowances act is paid instead.

A sole trader cannot pay a meal contribution to themselves as an employee. On a business trip, however, they can claim the meal allowance as a deductible expense at the amounts set by the travel allowances act. For sole-trader clients we therefore keep a simple trip log with date, destination and times, so the entitlement can be proved.

What to watch out for

A contribution above the statutory cap is treated as taxable income with contributions. Watch overlaps too: for the same day an employee cannot receive both the meal contribution and a trip meal allowance.

A cash contribution paid together with the wage, with no separate line on the payslip and no record of days worked, is hard to defend as a meal contribution in a tax audit. The auditors may treat it as ordinary pay, and the employer then pays the tax and contributions for every employee and every month at once.