Sunday night shift premium in Germany: 75% or 90% tax-free

Which premiums add up and which don't

Night work on a Sunday or public holiday qualifies twice. The tax-free night rate is added to the Sunday or holiday rate, even if the employer pays a single combined premium (R 3b(3) sentences 1 and 2 LStR). A night hour on a Sunday can therefore carry a tax-free premium of up to 75% of base pay.

The day rates, however, are never added to each other, and neither are the two night rates. The case that matters most in practice is a public holiday on a Sunday, such as October 3, 2027: only the holiday rate of 125% applies (§ 3b(1) no. 2 of the Income Tax Act, EStG, and R 3b(4) LStR). The night rate is still added on all of these days.

The rates, with legal basis and source, are in the night, Sunday and holiday premiums dataset, and the totals for every combination are in the kombinationen field.

All combinations at a glance

Source: § 3b EStG and R 3b(3) and (4) LStR, totals from the kombinationen field of the API

What does not add up

• Sunday and public holiday: if a holiday falls on a Sunday, only the holiday rate applies, even if the employer pays a Sunday premium (R 3b(4) LStR).
• Public holiday and Christmas or May 1: the 150% rate replaces the 125% holiday rate (§ 3b(1) no. 3 EStG).
• Sunday and Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve from 2 p.m.: only the rate for that day applies, the Sunday rate is not added (§ 3b(1) no. 2 EStG).
• The two night rates: from midnight to 4 a.m., 40% applies instead of 25%, not on top of it (§ 3b(3) no. 1 EStG).

The hours from midnight to 4 a.m.

For the hours between midnight and 4 a.m., what matters is when the shift started. If night work began before midnight, the night rate for those four hours rises from 25% to 40% (§ 3b(3) no. 1 EStG). If the shift starts at midnight or later, it stays at 25%.

The second effect concerns the following day. Work from midnight to 4 a.m. on the day after a Sunday or holiday also counts as Sunday or holiday work, provided the night shift began before midnight (§ 3b(3) no. 2 EStG). Someone who starts at 10 p.m. on Sunday is, for tax purposes, still working on Sunday until 4 a.m. on Monday. From 4 a.m., only the night rate applies.

For time tracking, this means you store the start and end of every shift with its date instead of summing hours per calendar day. Only the start time tells you whether the hours after midnight belong to the previous day and whether the higher night rate applies.

Worked example: night shift from Sunday 10 p.m. to Monday 6 a.m.

Reading the example

The nurse in the example has base pay of €20.00 an hour. Premiums of up to €112 for this shift stay tax-free, and because the base pay is below both caps, they are contribution-free as well. If the collective agreement pays more, the part above the maximum rates is taxed and subject to contributions as normal.

For payroll, calculate with the total hours and round only at the end. The API rounds the hourly amounts down to the cent because they are upper limits. If a shift only starts at midnight on Monday, the Sunday rule doesn't apply, and all night hours get just 25%.

Base pay and the two caps

The percentages refer to base pay (Grundlohn): regular pay for the contractual working hours, converted into an hourly rate (§ 3b(2) sentence 1 EStG). For monthly salaries, divide by 4.35 times the weekly hours (R 3b(2) LStR). For tax purposes, base pay counts up to €50.00 an hour at most.

For social security the cap is lower. Premiums are only free of contributions to the extent they are based on base pay of no more than €25.00 an hour (§ 1(1) sentence 1 no. 1 of the Social Security Remuneration Ordinance, SvEV). For statutory accident insurance, the premiums always count as pay (§ 1(2) SvEV).

With base pay of €30.00, one Sunday night hour between midnight and 4 a.m. leaves €27.00 tax-free, but only €22.50 free of contributions. The difference is tax-free yet subject to contributions. The API returns both amounts when you pass grundlohn_stunde.

Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, Easter and Pentecost

Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve are not public holidays, but tax law gives them their own rates from 2 p.m. On December 24 from 2 p.m., the 150% rate applies, and on December 31 from 2 p.m. the holiday rate of 125% (§ 3b(1) nos. 3 and 4 EStG). Before 2 p.m., only the night rate and, if the day is a Sunday, the Sunday rate count. Night work from 8 p.m. is added, so on Christmas Eve up to 175%.

Wage tax law treats Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday as public holidays in every state, including states whose holiday law doesn't list them (R 3b(3) sentence 4 LStR). Brandenburg lists both explicitly. So instead of 50%, up to 125% is tax-free on these two Sundays. If your time tracking treats them as ordinary Sundays, you leave tax-free room unused.

Which other days are public holidays depends on the law at the workplace, meaning where someone actually works, not where they live (§ 3b(2) sentence 4 EStG, R 3b(3) sentence 3 LStR). The list for each state comes from the public holidays dataset.

Where the right to a premium comes from

Only night workers (Nachtarbeitnehmer) have a statutory right, and only where no collective agreement governs compensation: they get a reasonable number of paid days off or a reasonable premium (§ 6(5) of the Working Hours Act, ArbZG). That law defines night time as 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., while tax law uses 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. (§ 2(3) ArbZG, § 3b(2) EStG).

For Sunday work, the Working Hours Act provides no premium, only a substitute rest day within two weeks, and for work on a public holiday that falls on a weekday, within eight weeks (§ 11(3) ArbZG). Pay for Sunday work exists only if a collective agreement or the contract provides for it. Keep premium rules and holiday calendars separate, as described in the use case on public holidays in shift planning.

Premium rates via the API

The API returns all rates for a given day and, with grundlohn_stunde, the tax-free and contribution-free amounts per hour. If the date falls on December 24, 25, 26 or 31 or on May 1, the rate for that day is in the sondertag field. On the MCP server, the tool is called hr_sfn_zuschlaege, and public holidays by state come from hr_feiertage.

All response fields are listed in the reference for the premiums endpoint. The JavaScript example below combines both queries and treats Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday as holidays in every state.

Request with curl

curl "https://api.quellenkontor.dev/v1/hr/sfn-zuschlaege?datum=2026-11-08&grundlohn_stunde=20" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $QK_KEY"

Excerpt of the response

{
  "datensatz": "sfn-zuschlaege",
  "datum": "2026-11-08",
  "grundlohn_stunde": 20,
  "kombinationen": {
    "nacht_sonntag": { "satz_prozent": 75, "steuerfrei": 15, "beitragsfrei": 15 },
    "nacht_0_bis_4_uhr_sonntag": { "satz_prozent": 90, "steuerfrei": 18, "beitragsfrei": 18 },
    "nacht_feiertag": { "satz_prozent": 150, "steuerfrei": 30, "beitragsfrei": 30 },
    "nacht_0_bis_4_uhr_feiertag": { "satz_prozent": 165, "steuerfrei": 33, "beitragsfrei": 33 },
    "nacht_weihnachten_1_mai": { "satz_prozent": 175, "steuerfrei": 35, "beitragsfrei": 35 },
    "nacht_0_bis_4_uhr_weihnachten_1_mai": { "satz_prozent": 190, "steuerfrei": 38, "beitragsfrei": 38 }
  },
  "sondertag": null
}

Combining rates and holidays with the JavaScript SDK

import { Quellenkontor } from "@quellenkontor/sdk";

const qk = new Quellenkontor(process.env.QK_KEY);
const beginn = "2026-11-08"; // Sunday, shift starts at 10 p.m.
const land = "NW";           // state of the workplace, not of the home

const [saetze, imLand, alle] = await Promise.all([
  qk.hr.sfnZuschlaege({ datum: beginn, grundlohn_stunde: 20 }),
  qk.hr.feiertage({ jahr: 2026, land }),
  qk.hr.feiertage({ jahr: 2026 }),
]);

// Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday count as holidays for § 3b EStG in every state
const ostern = alle.feiertage.filter((f) => f.id === "ostersonntag" || f.id === "pfingstsonntag");
const feiertag = [...imLand.feiertage, ...ostern].some((f) => f.datum === beginn);

const k = saetze.kombinationen[feiertag ? "nacht_feiertag" : "nacht_sonntag"];
console.log(k.satz_prozent, k.steuerfrei); // 75 15

Checklist for payroll and time tracking

• Store the start and end of every shift with its date so the hours from midnight to 4 a.m. are assigned correctly.
• Record the workplace for each shift, not the employee's home, and load that state's public holidays.
• Treat Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday as public holidays in every state.
• Apply the special rates on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve only from 2 p.m.
• Recalculate base pay for each pay period and apply the tax cap and the social security cap separately.
• Only treat hours actually worked as tax-free, and be able to show them individually (R 3b(6) LStR).