If you provide a Cafeteria benefit system for your employees, it is important to remember that choosing a benefit alone is not sufficient. For many benefits, proper documentation and additional declarations are essential in order to apply favourable tax treatment.
In this article, we would like to draw your attention to which benefits require additional declarations or documents.
If employees can choose from several benefits, the conditions of benefit selection must be clearly regulated in a Cafeteria policy.
This policy should specify:
- which benefits require declarations or documents in addition to the Cafeteria election form,
- the deadline and method for submitting these declarations,
- and how and by when employees must report any changes.
Declarations you may need to collect
SZÉP Card: Do not forget to ask employees to declare their SZÉP Card account number, and whether they receive SZÉP Card benefits from another employer. When monitoring the annual recreational limit, amounts received from other employers must also be taken into account. Declarations from previous years are not valid – a new declaration is required every year. This declaration is also required even if the SZÉP Card is not provided under a Cafeteria system, but as a one-off benefit based on an employer decision.
Active Hungarians sub-account (Aktív Magyarok alszámla)
If you provide benefits to the Active Hungarians sub-account, employees must declare that they have already spent at least 80% of the amount transferred in the previous calendar half-year. This requirement is set out in a government decree:
“A further condition for granting the due half-yearly benefit is that the employee declares to the employer that at least eighty percent of the amount transferred to the Active Hungarians sub-account in the previous calendar half-year, based on Section 71 (1a) of the Personal Income Tax Act, has already been spent.”
If you plan to grant this benefit in the first half of 2026, the declaration must relate to the use of the amount transferred in the second half of 2025.
Declaration regarding family members
Several benefits may be provided not only to employees, but also to their close family members. For example, cultural or sports benefits or low-value gifts may be granted to close relatives. In such cases, it is essential to obtain a declaration containing the personal details of the entitled family members.
Housing support
When providing housing support, employees must declare:
- the purpose of the support (loan repayment or rental fee),
- the bank account number,
- and the address of the property.
Employer contribution to a voluntary pension fund
If an employer provides a contribution to a voluntary pension fund, it must be applied under identical conditions to all eligible fund-member employees who have been employed for at least six months, as required by law. The contribution may only be excluded for certain employees if they explicitly request the suspension or termination of the contribution in writing. Therefore, if not all employees request or receive the contribution uniformly, you must obtain a written declaration from those employees who request the suspension of the benefit.
Exit declaration
If an employee’s employment terminates during the year and they have received more Cafeteria benefits than they were proportionally entitled to, the excess amount may need to be deducted from their final salary, or repaid by the employee. In such cases, an declaration is also required.
If you are unsure whether your Cafeteria policy properly regulates all eligibility rules, or if you need support in designing the necessary declarations, feel free to contact us – we are happy to help.
