Hartz IV: Job center cuts woman's salary because of gas money - decision is highly controversial

Created: 05/27/2022, 14:13

By: Lisa Mayerhofer

The job center in Uelzen reduced the salary of a Hartz IV recipient who delivers newspapers because of her petrol money.

(Iconic image) © Wolfgang Maria Weber/Imago

A job center reduced the salary of a Hartz IV recipient who delivers newspapers because of her petrol money.

Now the case is causing heated legal discussions.

Uelzen – A newspaper editor has been arguing with the job center in Uelzen for years about her gas money.

After an accident, the 56-year-old, who lives in the province of Lower Saxony, was no longer able to work full-time and took a job as a newspaper exhibitor, as reported by

.

In addition to a fixed hourly wage and night supplement, she also receives petrol money from her employer.

You have to top up your income with Hartz IV.

Hartz IV recipient: “I also pay the petrol costs from my minimum wage”

But the job center in Uelzen added the fuel money to the woman's hourly wages - and thereby significantly reduced her entitlement to Hartz IV benefits.

The justification of the job center: The petrol money is “not earmarked payments”, but a “regular part of the earned income”.

The petrol money is therefore a “wage component”.

The person concerned does not understand this: the petrol fee would be determined with the help of a GPS device in the car and billed to the nearest cent.

"I need the gas money to be able to do my delivery job at all, because in our country, newspapers are always delivered in private cars," she told

.

The calculations of the job center leave too little of the fuel money: "Of the 24 cents fuel money per kilometer I'm only allowed to keep 20 percent, that's not even 5 cents!

So from my minimum wage I also pay most of the gas costs myself!”

She therefore filed a complaint with the social court in Lüneburg and, after waiting for a while, filed an urgent application.

In this she was right for the time being.

The decision (file no.: S 50 AS 17/21 ER) of April 16, 2021 states: "The part of the wages referred to by the employer as 'petrol money' is NOT to be counted as income within the meaning of paragraph 11 SGB II." The employer only replace the costs incurred by the woman, the social court finds.

"It is therefore only a matter of reimbursement of expenses and not real wage payments".

After an urgent application: the job center returns to the old calculation method – the Hartz IV recipient is desperate

But the decision from the urgent application only referred to a limited period of time - after this was over, the job center went back to the old calculation and evaluated the petrol money as income, reports

.

"Month after month I lose a lot of money," the woman told the news portal.

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The job center sees itself in the right: In the autumn of last year, the Federal Social Court in Kassel ruled in a similar case (AZ: B 14 AS 41/20 R) that the petrol fee is to be considered as income to be taken into account.

In the case, a man who worked in the driver service of the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund and topped up with Hartz IV had complained.

Here, too, the job center in Zwickau calculated the petrol fee based on his income.

The Federal Social Court ruled that the plaintiff could not keep the full travel allowance, but was allowed to deduct certain amounts.

The state social court would have to determine this again.

A final decision by the Lüneburg Social Court is still pending for the 56-year-old affected.

The Hartz IV recipient is already waiting with great excitement for the verdict.