The current legal situation regarding tax relief for health training is neither comprehensible nor expedient!
20 euros from the employer and 20 euros from the health insurance company, so that a member only has to pay 20 euros of their own monthly gym membership fee - that is one of the aims of FiD, supported by DFAV e.V. and BVGSD e.V.
However, the main problem here is the tax-free allowance of 500 euros per year that every employer is allowed to spend on the health of each of their employees. According to current legislation, these 500 euros, or even fractions thereof, may not be spent on training on fitness equipment, but - if for fitness - then only for health training in the form of a course.
Why no subsidy for equipment training?
Experts, from fitness trainers to university professors, just shake their heads uncomprehendingly. Especially when it comes to obesity, there is probably no more targeted training than training on cardio and strength equipment in a fitness studio.
Just imagine a person weighing over 100 kg or obese trying to do sit-ups. In order to comply with the above regulation on supervised training, another 100 kg person stands next to them and helps them to do the sit-ups by pulling them up by hand.
Equipment for abdominal muscle training, which allows obese people to train with low loads or initially with low weights, may not be used within the scope of this regulation.
But what speaks against the use of fitness equipment? Fitness training in the gym ranks far, far down the list of sports injuries for all health insurance companies. So it can't be down to the risk of injury.
Good arguments for a rethink
The DOSB and its club gyms will have given up their resistance by now. So it is letting common sense prevail and allowing healthy exercise on equipment as part of the employer allowance. Of course, it is clear that the training to be carried out must then also be evaluated and documented. But these are more or less technical or surmountable obstacles.
The important thing is to find a way forward in line with policy. Here, Paul Underberg has already proven several times that his arguments are really more convincing than those of the "big" DSSV e.V.
Volker Ebener
Source: F&G
Published on: 18 November 2015