Personal tax-free allowance

The personal tax-free allowance (in Slovak, nezdaniteľná časť základu dane) is the part of your income on which no tax is paid. It is subtracted from your tax base before the 19% is worked out. That is why an employee on a low wage pays far less tax than 19% of the whole wage would suggest.

Where it enters the salary calculation

Net salary is worked out in three steps:

1. The employee's social and health contributions, 13.4% in total, are taken off the gross salary. What remains is the tax base.
2. The allowance is taken off the tax base. What remains is the taxable amount.
3. Tax at 19%, or 25% on high incomes, is charged on the taxable amount.

The allowance therefore lowers the tax, not the contributions. And tax cannot go negative: if the tax base is below the allowance, the tax is zero, but nobody pays out the difference.

You claim it by signing a declaration with your employer, and you can claim it with only one employer at a time.

The amount in 2026

It is derived from the subsistence minimum, which has been €284.13 since 1 July 2025.

• A year: 21 times the subsistence minimum, i.e. €5,966.73.
• A month: one twelfth of that, i.e. €497.23.

The full amount applies to anyone whose annual tax base does not exceed €26,083.13 (91.8 times the subsistence minimum). With the same salary all year, that corresponds to a gross salary of roughly €2,510 a month.

Reduction at higher incomes

Above that threshold the allowance tapers according to:

$$N\check{C}ZD = 51{,}6 \cdot \check{Z}M - \frac{ZD}{3}$$

• $N\check{C}ZD$: the annual allowance in euros
• $\check{Z}M$: the subsistence minimum, €284.13 in 2026, so $51{,}6 \cdot \check{Z}M = 14\,661{,}11$ €
• $ZD$: the annual tax base in euros, i.e. gross income minus contributions

It reaches zero at an annual tax base of €43,983.32, which is also the point above which the higher 25% rate applies.

Compared with the years up to 2024, not only the multiple of the subsistence minimum changed but also the divisor in the formula: the tax base used to be divided by four, now by three.

A worked example

Gross salary €1,800 a month.

Contributions at 13.4% are €241.20, so the tax base is €1,558.80. That is €18,705.60 a year, below the threshold, so the full €497.23 is deducted.

The taxable amount is 1,558.80 − 497.23 = €1,061.57 and 19% tax on it is €201.70. The net salary comes to €1,357.10.

Without the allowance the tax would be €296.17 and the net salary €94.47 lower.

Gross salary €3,000 a month.

The tax base is €2,598 a month, €31,176 a year. That is above the threshold, so the allowance is reduced:

$$14\,661{,}11 - \frac{31\,176}{3} = 4\,269{,}11$$

The annual allowance is therefore €4,269.11. Instead of €497.23 a month, only €355.76 is deducted.

You can check both figures in the net salary calculator.

What to watch out for

Monthly during the year, annual at the end. Your employer works out tax advances from the monthly salary. If your income changed during the year, the actual allowance is settled from the annual tax base in the annual reconciliation or your tax return.

It is not the tax bonus. The child tax bonus is taken off the tax after it has been calculated and has rules of its own. The net salary calculator deliberately leaves it out.

The amount changes every year. It depends on the subsistence minimum, which is adjusted on 1 July. The figures on this page apply to 2026.

Related

The whole calculation from gross to net, with every contribution broken out, is in the net salary calculator. How the value of a salary changes over time is covered under inflation, and the difference between nominal and real income under real vs. nominal return.