Your payroll slip (the so-called pay stub) is your most important financial document that you receive every month. Unfortunately, despite the use of advanced software, human error is still extremely common in accounting. It is important to know how to independently check if all items are entered correctly. These five errors most often take significant amounts of money out of workers' pockets month after month.
A month does not have a fixed number of working hours. Depending on how many working days (Monday - Friday) that month has, the hour pool can range from 160 to 184 hours.
Most common error: When a state holiday or public holiday falls on a working day, the employer must count that day as "worked" (8 hours) if you did not work. If you worked on that state holiday, that work must be additionally paid with the prescribed holiday pay supplement which legally cannot be zero. Some systems treat holidays as non-working days and do not enter regular hours for you, making your base lower than contracted.
Porezna uprava (FBiH/RS) raises the amounts of what the employer can pay completely tax-free every year (e.g., rewards for work results, meal costs).
It is very common to negotiate a "fixed net amount" when hiring (which is a bad practice in itself) and the employer "fills" that fixed amount with tax-free items up to the maximum limit so they pay less tax to the state while ensuring you the agreed net amount. If the meal limit is raised by law this year, it's possible your net will stay the same but you will no longer receive a regular bonus as before but a tax-free allowance (shifting the structure to the detriment of your Gross/Pension). Check if the employer pays the maximum assigned amount of tax-free rewards offered by the state to legally raise your net in that way.
Initial days of sick leave are usually at the employer's expense and the prescribed percentage for sick leave compensation applies (which most often ranges from 70-85% of the basic salary, and rarely 100%, depending on collective agreements and regulations). On the other hand, sick leave at the state's expense (Zavod zdravstvenog osiguranja) does not have the same tax treatment (no additional contributions are made on that amount upon payment, it is a pure amount). The error occurs when the accounting for the sick leave compensation and the consideration of the reduced coefficient is done incorrectly by wrongly calculating your three-month hourly average or mixing state compensation days with the employer's burden.
Personal deduction directly reduces the tax you pay, increasing your final net amount. Dependent family members (children until the end of regular schooling, unemployed spouses with income less than the prescribed limit) are the most common personal deduction "factors".
Common error: The birth of a child or the employment of a child (loss of student rights/dependent member status) is not recorded in the system (nacionalni digitalni sustav) on time. When calculating, the employer deducts tax you shouldn't pay or pays you a larger net that you will have to return to the state at the end of the year, with penalty interest. The responsibility for updating the tax card is absolutely always on the worker, not on the company's accounting department.
Paying for overtime hours worked through "rewards" or tax-free incentives is an extremely unfavorable practice for the worker. Legally, an overtime hour is paid +50% more than a regular working hour and is a fully taxable receipt. This means the money paid for overtime increases the payment into your own Pension fund and health insurance. Employers know how to "mask" this by shifting working hours to "Occasional rewards" because such contributions are not paid on them, only the net sum goes to the worker. This leads to a smaller pension for the worker in the long run and false filling of working hour quotas for the labor inspection.
Do you doubt the correctness of your salary?
Use our precise calculator to enter your gross base, additions, and status and check if the final calculated amount matches the figure you actually receive on your bank account.