Medical Assistant Salary Calculator

Coverage and confirmed classification

The calculator supports MFA activity groups I–VI in the AAA/vmf salary agreement. There are eight professional-experience bands in 2025 and nine in 2026, including a separate band from year 33. Check tariff applicability or contractual incorporation and your employer-confirmed credited service.

Understand basic pay, allowances and net

Full-time is 38.5 weekly hours. Part-time uses table value / 167 × contracted weekly hours × 4.33, rounded to cents. At 100%, the printed full-time cell applies. Group, experience band and working time stay constant throughout the calendar year.

Ordinary net, one-off net, bank payout and annual totals are separate. Mandatory professional funds support RV-linked or confirmed contributions. Occupational pensions such as KZVK and salary conversion are excluded. Ordinary net is withheld at regular monthly gross of EUR 2,000 or less.

Activity group and professional experience answer different questions

An MFA activity group describes the duties and qualifying responsibilities assigned under the applicable agreement. Professional years describe the recognised experience band. These are separate dimensions: a long employment history does not by itself prove a higher activity group, and a new qualification does not automatically establish every experience year claimed. Use written classification information from the practice and check which duties the qualification actually supports. A comparison between colleagues is meaningful only after the agreement version, group, recognised experience and weekly working time have all been aligned.

A change of practice can make this distinction especially important. Ask which earlier employment periods are credited and from which date a new band applies. Do not substitute your age, the date of your first medical appointment or the time since a training course for recognised professional service. Keep the evidence behind the classification, particularly where the contract incorporates the agreement by reference. The calculator is intended to calculate a confirmed combination; it cannot settle a disagreement about whether a particular role meets the contractual requirements of an activity group.

Compare part-time contracts using the actual tariff rule

Weekly hours alone do not determine a comparable hourly salary when two contracts use different full-time definitions. First identify the full-time week and the agreement's conversion rule. The researched MFA framework uses 38.5 weekly full-time hours and a specific monthly conversion for part-time wages. That rule should not be replaced silently with the simple percentage multiplication used for another agreement. A full-time table amount, the monthly part-time amount and an indicative hourly figure can therefore serve different purposes. Keep their units visible when assessing an offer.

For budgeting, start with the actual contractual hours and predictable remuneration. Overtime, additional duties and irregular supplements should be considered separately from the base amount. If a practice offers a salary above the tariff, establish whether that extra amount is fixed, revocable or intended to absorb a later increase. This page does not infer those terms from the total salary. A personal comparison can record the confirmed base and extra payment separately, making it possible to see whether a later tariff change improves the total or merely changes its composition.

Special payments require their own eligibility check

A Christmas or annual special payment is not interchangeable with twelve ordinary monthly salaries. The relevant agreement can link entitlement and amount to continuity of employment, a reference date, length of service and other conditions. An offer mentioning a percentage should therefore also identify the salary base, payment date and any reduction rules. Paid leave, unpaid absence, joining or leaving the practice and contractual variations may require a closer assessment. These conditions must be verified before a percentage is added to a published salary calculator.

The published MFA calculation uses both salary tables from the Bundesärztekammer publication and the matching Manteltarifvertrag. Confirm eligibility before including the December special payment: at least six full calendar employment months and no applicable exclusion are required. The rate is 50% in the first employment year and 70% subsequently. The model assumes unchanged full-year employment and no reduction, so joining, leaving and protected or unpaid absences need separate assessment. Enter eligible recurring allowances separately from overtime and duty supplements. Additional contractual Christmas money is only the amount beyond the tariff payment, preventing the same entitlement from being counted twice.

A useful comparison goes beyond the headline salary

Compare offers over the same number of contractual hours and the same calendar period. Record paid working time, the ordinary gross wage, guaranteed additional payments and any employer-funded benefits separately. Travel time, commuting costs and the predictability of the rota can affect your household decision even though they are not deductions in this wage model. Do not subtract a cost from taxable payroll merely because you expect to incur it. A possible deduction in an income-tax return and an immediate reduction of monthly salary are different calculations.

Prepare the details from your payslip

Start with a recent ordinary payslip and your employment contract. Record the applicable agreement, confirmed group and experience step, contractual weekly hours and the month you want to compare. Then check your tax class, federal state, church-tax status and health insurer. Use the insurer's own additional contribution rate rather than assuming every fund charges the national average. Changing several settings at once makes a discrepancy harder to explain: first reproduce the basic gross salary, then add your personal deductions and finally compare additional payments.

Children affect different parts of payroll in different ways. The registered child-allowance count is not necessarily the same as the number of children relevant for long-term care insurance. Likewise, private health insurance requires actual premiums and the certified basic-coverage amount used for tax withholding. A figure copied from a household budget may include supplementary cover that does not belong in that tax field. The calculation is only as specific as the information entered, so compare each setting with the corresponding payroll record before treating a difference as an error.

Read monthly net, bank payout and annual totals separately

Regular monthly net answers what remains after the modelled deductions from recurring wages. A bonus has its own withholding calculation and may leave a different proportion of its gross amount. Annual net is a sum of the individual payroll months, including supported one-off payments; it is not the final income tax determined after a tax return. Other income, deductible expenses, a spouse's earnings and changes during the year can alter that final assessment. Keep these distinctions in mind when comparing two job offers or choosing a working-time percentage.

Bank payout can also differ from money available to spend. If an employer pays a subsidy while you transfer the full private insurance premium or professional-fund contribution yourself, part of the amount arriving in your account is already committed. Compare offers using income after those payments, and reserve the required contribution before allocating rent, savings or discretionary spending. Employer contributions are useful information about the remuneration package, but they are not an extra net salary payment unless the stated collection method actually pays them to you.