Posting Employees to Germany: Employment, Immigration and Social Security Risks

Checklist for UK Companies Posting Employees to Germany

Guest Article by Martin Halfmann, LL.M. | Employment Lawyer at Schlun & Elseven

A UK company sending an employee to Germany for a project, a client engagement, or market development work is not simply moving one person across a border. Three separate legal regimes apply at once – employment standards, immigration, and social security and tax – and each has its own rules, its own thresholds, and its own penalties for getting it wrong. Since Brexit removed the free-movement assumptions that used to simplify much of this, UK companies need to work through all three deliberately rather than by habit.

Three Regimes, Three Separate Codes

A posting, in the legal sense, is a temporary deployment of an employee to Germany who remains integrated into the UK employer and is expected to return once the assignment ends. This is distinct from staff leasing, where a company supplies workers for a German client to direct and control, and it is distinct from establishing a genuine ongoing presence in Germany.

Once a posting is confirmed as genuine, it is governed by three entirely separate legal regimes, each with its own code, its own authority, and its own paperwork: labor law and reporting duties, social security and tax law, as well as immigration. The most common mistake in this area is treating the three as one problem – compliance with one does not imply compliance with the others.

Labor Law and Reporting: Which Code Applies

Every posting that involves providing a service in Germany can trigger a notification duty before work begins, but none of the three codes that might apply is a general catch-all – each bites only in specific circumstances. Section 18 of the Posted Workers Act (Arbeitnehmer-Entsendegesetz, AEntG) applies where the minimum working conditions that Section 16 AEntG declares generally binding for a particular sector – typically construction and related trades under extended collective wage agreements – apply to the posting. Section 16 of the Minimum Wage Act (Mindestlohngesetz, MiLoG) applies specifically where the posting falls within one of the higher-risk sectors listed in Section 2a of the Act to Combat Undeclared Work (Schwarzarbeitsbekämpfungsgesetz), such as construction, cleaning, hospitality, and the meat processing industry. Section 17b of the Temporary Employment Act (AÜG) applies to staff leasing arrangements, but only where a minimum wage ordinance issued under Section 3a AÜG applies to that particular leasing relationship. In other words, whether a notification is required at all depends on matching the specific sector and wage framework to the right code – a question worth checking case by case rather than assuming.

A related but separate documentation duty requires the employer to record daily working hours within seven calendar days of the work being performed, retain the records for at least two years, and keep the underlying documents available in Germany for the duration of the assignment, under Section 19 AEntG, Section 17 MiLoG, or Section 17c AÜG, as applicable. This recording duty – not the notification duty itself – is what falls away for certain postings: workers who are the employer’s spouse, registered partner, child, or parent are exempted, as are, under the Minimum Wage Documentation Obligations Regulation (Mindestlohndokumentationspflichtenverordnung, MiLoDokV), workers earning a steady gross monthly wage above €4,461 (2026 figure, indexed to minimum wage increases and worth reconfirming against the current rate before relying on it in a live matter).

Notifications are filed through the Minimum Wage Notification Portal (Meldeportal-Mindestlohn) and must include the names, dates of birth, nationality and contact details of the workers being deployed, the start and expected duration of the assignment, the location in Germany where the required documents are kept, the industry and role the workers will perform, and the details of a German-based authorized recipient (Zustellungsbevollmächtigter) who can accept official correspondence on the employer’s behalf.

One point worth flagging for logistics and haulage clients specifically: the statute expressly carves out road transport, and expressly names the UK alongside EU and EEA states in doing so. Postings of drivers from UK-based haulage companies are notified through a separate EU electronic system, the Internal Market Information System (IMI), rather than the Minimum Wage Notification Portal used for other sectors, while hauliers from outside the EU/EEA/UK track still use the standard portal.

Social Security: Staying on UK National Insurance

Germany’s starting position, under Section 3 No. 1 of the Fourth Book of the Social Security Code (SGB IV), is that anyone working in Germany is subject to German social security law regardless of where their employer is based. The operative exception for postings, however, still runs through EU Regulation 883/2004, Articles 12 and 16 – the UK’s departure from the EU did not remove this reference point, because the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement’s Protocol on Social Security Coordination plugs the UK into the same mechanism rather than replacing it with something new.

In practice, this means a UK employee posted to Germany can generally remain on UK National Insurance, avoiding German social security contributions, for up to 24 months, provided the UK’s equivalent of an A1 certificate is obtained from HMRC before the posting begins and carried by the employee throughout.

Immigration: Separating the Employer from the Employee

Since Brexit, UK nationals are third-country nationals for German immigration purposes, and under Sections 4a(1) and 4(1) AufenthG, any foreign national wanting to work in Germany generally needs a residence title from the competent German authority. Beyond that starting point, it is worth correcting a common assumption directly: the so-called Vander Elst visa, sometimes assumed to cover any posted worker, does not apply to a UK company posting its own UK staff. That route, under Section 21 BeschV, is reserved for companies established within the EU posting their third-country national employees – employees who already hold a residence permit from that EU member state – to Germany. A UK employer is not established in the EU, so this route becomes relevant only where the posting runs through an EU subsidiary’s own workforce, not where a UK company sends its own people directly.

For a UK company posting its own UK staff, the routes that actually apply are narrower and depend on what the employee is doing:

  • Short business trips – advisory work, negotiations, non-productive activity – often fall within the Schengen allowance of 90 days in any rolling 180-day period, with no separate work-permit route required.
  • Genuine service or works-contract postings (Werkvertrag) beyond that scope typically require a residence title under AufenthG and BeschV, alongside compliance with the Illegal Employment Act (Schwarzarbeitsbekämpfungsgesetz) and the AEntG/MiLoG wage rules above. Note that the dedicated contingent-quota procedure for Werkvertrag workers, administered by the Federal Employment Agency’s central placement office (ZAV), rests on bilateral government agreements Germany holds with specific sending states – historically Central and Eastern European states and Turkey – and the UK is not among them, so this particular quota route is not available to UK postings.
  • Intra-company transfers – a manager, specialist, or trainee moving to a German branch or subsidiary – go through Section 19 AufenthG (the ICT Card), which requires at least six months of prior employment abroad and a transfer exceeding 90 days, or, where those conditions are not met, the staff exchange procedure under Section 10(1) No. 1 BeschV.
  • Very short assignments may fall under the non-employment fiction (Nichtbeschäftigungsfiktion) of Section 30 BeschV, which treats certain brief activities as not constituting employment at all for permit purposes.

Tax: The 183-Day Rule and Employer Registration

Germany is generally entitled to tax income earned from work physically performed on German soil. The UK-Germany double taxation agreement provides an exception where the employee is present in Germany for fewer than 183 days in the relevant year, is paid by an employer not resident in Germany, and the cost is not borne by a German permanent establishment. Where these conditions are not all met, German income tax becomes due, and the UK employer may need to register as a domestic employer and operate the German payroll withholding procedure under Section 38 of the Income Tax Act (EStG) – a process that regularly catches foreign employers by surprise given how different it is from UK PAYE.

Checklist for UK Companies Posting Employees to Germany

  • Confirm the posting is genuinely temporary and the employee remains integrated into, and paid by, the UK company, rather than staff leasing in substance.
  • Identify which reporting code applies – AEntG, MiLoG, or AÜG – and file the required notification before work begins.
  • Check whether the family-member or high-earner exemption from the working-time recording duty applies under MiLoDokV.
  • Do not assume the Vander Elst visa route applies – confirm which of the Schengen, Werkvertrag, ICT, or short-assignment routes actually fits the posting.
  • Obtain the UK’s A1-equivalent certificate from HMRC before the posting begins to keep the employee on UK National Insurance.
  • Assess the 183-day income tax position and register as a domestic employer in Germany if required.

The German law firm Schlun & Elseven advises UK and US companies on the full range of employment, immigration, and social security questions arising from personnel postings to Germany, closely coordinating with their domestic lawyers in order to find the best solution.

For additional information on German employment law and cross-border mobility see these posts:

Image licensed from Magnific.com (and yes, we know that, technically, the guy does not point at Germany at all, but at least it is the right time zone)

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