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by dathinab 2217 days ago
But doesn't this cost the company more due to taxes and salary side costs.

At least in Germany this would either not be a good deal for the employee or employer.

Also I'm not sure how legal it would be in Germany and other EU countries.
2 comments
wjnc 2217 days ago
It's a regular feature in NL. You can even do arbitrage. Buy extra vacation days, save some of the days you regularly get in excess of the legal limit (the legal days expire in 18 months, those above in 60 months). Sell those at a later date for your then current income. Beats saving.

Edit: thanks, spelling

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Smaug123 2217 days ago
Off-topic nit: I think you mean "arbitrage", the practice of buying something where it's cheap and selling it where it's expensive. "Arbitration" is a method of resolving disputes by having a neutral third party decide what the correct outcome is.
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twic 2217 days ago
Strictly speaking, this is not an arbitrage, because (a) you run the risk of not getting an above-inflation pay rise, and (b) even if such a pay rise is a certainty, you are locking your money up while you wait for it. The latter point makes it a carry trade, rather than an arbitrage.

If you could sell your future interest in refundable vacation days now, for more than it cost you to buy them, that would be an arbitrage.

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majewsky 2217 days ago
I do something similar though different with my German employer. My employer lets me send my yearly bonus (or part of it) into a time account, i.e. the money gets converted into hours based on my hourly salary. Every five years, I have the option of withdrawing hours from the time account to take a sabbatical (with the normal salary payments just continuing in the meantime). And if I don't withdraw all of it by the time of retirement, the rest gets withdrawn for an early retirement with full pay.
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close04 2217 days ago
This would conceivably work by adjusting the work schedule. So if you want 2 extra vacation days this month you simply get assigned to a 90% working time (and salary). Your standard holiday days stay untouched but your salary goes down proportionally, and so do the employer's taxes.
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