Employees do not always take the vacation days to which they are entitled. Can vacation be carried over to the next year and when do vacation days expire?
- Is March 31st really the deadline for remaining vacation ?
- When can vacation be taken into the next year?
- Can holidays also be paid out?
Employees do not always manage to take their vacation entitlement in a calendar year. Some even deliberately take some days off into the new year, assuming that it will not expire until March 31 of the following year. But in most cases they are wrong.
Holidays must be taken in the current calendar year
Because so-called remaining leave does not expire at the end of March the following year, but already on December 31 of the current year. For 2020, December 31, 2020 is the day on which vacation expires and not March 31, 2021. However, vacation entitlement * does not expire automatically simply because you have not applied for your vacation.
Employers must notify their employees in good time of any remaining leave and specifically ask them to take it. Only if the employee still does not take his vacation in the current year can it expire in the following year. The employer's duty to point out existing vacation days also applies to remaining vacation days from previous years.
Read here: Sick on vacation - How to get your vacation days back.
When can vacation be carried over into the next year?
Remaining leave can only be carried over to the next year in exceptional cases. The law firm Hasselbach points this out in a blog post. Accordingly, there must be urgent operational reasons such as large orders, vacation locks or a particularly high number of illnesses. The same applies if employees were unable to take all vacation days in the current calendar year due to illness, parental leave or maternity leave.
Depending on the company, a different regulation for the taking of remaining vacation days can be made or allowed in the employment contract .
Find out more: Are colleagues and employers allowed to contact you on vacation?
Can vacation be paid out?
Those who hoped to have their remaining vacation paid out have bad cards. Because vacations cannot be exchanged for money. Workers should relax on vacation. However, there is one exception: As WirtschaftsWoche explains, vacation days can be paid out if you cancel * if there is not enough time to take them.
Also interesting: That's why you shouldn't start working on a Monday after your vacation.
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* merkur.de is part of the nationwide central Ippen editorial network.