Bonus payment

A bonus payment (short bonus; plural bonuses ) is usually paid in addition to salary, wages or salary, mostly to employees, sometimes self-employed or freelancers. The prospect of a bonus is the motivation of the receiver on the economic success of the company and is sometimes thought of as a fair share of the economic success of the paying company. Bonuses are regarded as elements of a performance-based compensation and can in principle be also. In many cases, especially at high payments, this however is euphemistically, as the level of payment to, often short-term or short-lived, revenue, revenue growth, surpluses or accumulated profits for oriented, reflect neither sustainable benefits for the company, even a measure of the actual long-term performance of the receiver in favor of the company are, especially since they can be manipulated under circumstances of employees in their favor. This can be countered in many ways in the actual design of an entitlement to a bonus in the employment contract. However, in practice this rarely happens.

If in poor performance, a deduction from the remuneration made ​​, called this a penalty.

The current bonus system was developed primarily by the investment banks in the 1970s and was supposed to be a useful bonus.

Due to the financial crisis in 2007, the European Union set upper limits for bonuses.