The thirteenth month, and the countries that require one

Who requires what

^ Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, Poland and India have no universal statutory requirement.

The ones that are commonly misread

Germany and France. A thirteenth month is common in both, and in neither is it statutory. It arrives through a collective agreement or through custom, which means it is compulsory for the employers those agreements cover and absent for the ones they do not. This site does not include it, so the German and French figures are lower than what a great many employers there actually pay.

Spain. The two extra payments can be prorated across the twelve monthly payslips where the collective agreement allows it. Prorating changes the cash flow, not the annual total. A monthly salary quoted in Spain is worth checking for whether it already includes the proration.

India. There is no thirteenth month, but there is a statutory annual bonus under the Payment of Bonus Act of 8.33% to 20% of wages for employees earning 21,000 rupees a month or less, computed on a 7,000 rupee base or the state minimum wage if higher. It is a real obligation with a small absolute value.

The Netherlands. The 8% holiday allowance is not a bonus and not discretionary. It is required by the Minimum Wage and Minimum Holiday Allowance Act, paid on top of wages, usually in May.

Why it changes the country ranking

Portugal's employer contribution is 23.75%, which is well below France's. Add the two statutory subsidies and Portugal's total uplift passes 40% and lands above France's mid-salary figure. Spain does the same thing from a 30.65% contribution rate.

Two months is 16.7% of salary. It is applied before contributions in most systems, so in Spain and Portugal the contributions are charged on the extra months too, and the effective cost is higher again than the arithmetic above suggests. The figures on this site apply the uplift to the salary and do not compound contributions onto the extra months, which is one of the reasons every figure here is described as a floor.

What to check in an offer

If you are quoting an annual salary into Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico or the Philippines, establish whether the figure you are discussing is the twelve-month base or the full annual total. The two differ by up to 16.7% and both get called "the salary" in conversation. The country pages show which convention each country's law is written in.

Extra pay and contributions interact

In most systems the statutory extra months are themselves wages, which means the social security contributions are charged on them too. In Portugal, the 23.75% employer contribution applies to the holiday subsidy and the Christmas subsidy as well as to the twelve monthly payments. In Brazil the employer INSS, the RAT and the Sistema S levies all apply to the décimo terceiro.

The figures on this site do not compound the contributions onto the extra months. They apply the extra-pay uplift to the salary and stop there, which understates Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines. We chose to understate rather than to model an interaction that each country's rules handle slightly differently, and it is one of the specific reasons every figure here is described as a floor rather than an estimate.

If you need the compounded figure for a budget, the arithmetic is not hard once you know which convention the country uses, and the rates and ceilings are all in data.json with their sources. What you should not do is take a percentage from a comparison site, multiply it by twelve months of salary, and treat the result as the cost of a Portuguese or Spanish hire.

The cash flow question

Even where the annual total is understood, the timing catches people out. Brazil's thirteenth month arrives in two installments in November and December. Mexico's aguinaldo must be paid by 20 December. Portugal's Christmas subsidy is a December payment. A team spread across those countries produces a December payroll substantially larger than every other month of the year, and a company that has budgeted an even twelve-month run rate can discover this at an awkward point in its own financial year, depending on a year-end this article does not assume.

The Netherlands is the exception in timing as well as in form: the 8% holiday allowance is usually paid in May.

What to check before the offer goes out

This is the same check as above, worth repeating right before an offer letter goes out rather than only at the budgeting stage: is the local convention a monthly base multiplied by fourteen, or an annual total divided into fourteen payments?

Then run the country through the calculator, which applies the statutory extra months automatically, and read the country page for the exact statutory basis. What the number leaves out covers the collectively agreed thirteenth months that we deliberately do not include.

Who this is not for

If you are hiring only in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Australia, Poland or India, there is no statutory extra month and this article is background rather than budget. It is also not a guide to discretionary bonuses, which are a commercial decision and appear nowhere in statute. And where a collective agreement in Germany or France requires a thirteenth month, that obligation is real but is outside the scope of everything on this site.

Sources

• Portugal, holiday and Christmas subsidies: Segurança Social and the Código do Trabalho. Checked 21 August 2026.
• Spain, pagas extraordinarias, Article 31 of the Workers' Statute, and 2026 contribution bases: BOE. Checked 21 August 2026.
• Brazil, décimo terceiro and employer contributions: Receita Federal. Checked 21 August 2026.
• Netherlands, holiday allowance and the Zvw employer levy: Belastingdienst. Checked 21 August 2026.
• India, EPF and EPS employer contributions: EPFO contribution rate schedule. Checked 21 August 2026.