Customs inspections for undeclared work in Germany

The undeclared work unit of the German customs administration inspects companies on site. Section 2a of the Undeclared Work Act obliges workers in eleven sectors to carry their identity document. Employing a foreign worker without the required residence title carries a fine of up to 500,000 euro.

The inspection reaches companies that hired lawfully as readily as those that did not. The difference lies not in the outcome of the identity check but in whether the employer's written duties were discharged before anyone arrived at the gate.

The identity duty and the written notice

Section 2a names eleven sectors: construction, the catering and accommodation trade, passenger transport, forwarding, transport and logistics including platform based delivery services, the showman's trade, building cleaning, the assembly and dismantling of trade fairs and exhibitions, the meat industry excluding the butcher's craft, prostitution, the security trade, and the hairdressing and cosmetics trade.

Workers in these sectors must carry their identity card, passport, passport substitute or identity substitute and produce it to the customs authorities on request. The employer's duty is the less familiar half: it must inform every worker of that duty in writing and in a provable form, keep the notice for the duration of the work, and produce it at an inspection.

This is the finding that arises most often on inspection, and it is entirely avoidable. The notice costs nothing; it simply has to be signed and filed before the first shift. A worker carrying a passport does not help the company if the notice is missing.

What the inspection opens up on site

Alongside identity documents, the unit checks working time records. Section 17 of the Minimum Wage Act requires the start, end and duration of daily working time to be recorded by the end of the seventh calendar day after the day worked, and the records to be kept for at least two years. The documents must be held in Germany in German and produced at the place of work on request.

The benchmark for the pay check is the statutory minimum wage, which German customs states for the Minimum Wage Act as 13.90 euro gross per hour from 1 January 2026 and 14.60 euro from 1 January 2027. A deduction for accommodation or meals that pushes the amount paid out below that line is not a rent question but a minimum wage breach; the limits are set out in accommodation for foreign workers in Germany.

The contracting chain is liable too

The figure that makes the largest difference sits in section 404 subsection 1 of Book Three of the Social Code. Under it, a company also commits an offence where it engages another business for works or services knowing, or negligently not knowing, that the business employs a foreign worker without the required title. The 500,000 euro ceiling applies to that case exactly as it does to direct employment.

For main contractors in construction and for clients in logistics and cleaning, that is the real message of the provision. An inspector who finds a subcontractor on site does not stop at the subcontractor. Negligence here means not having asked to see the titles of the people deployed. What a defensible right to work check looks like is described in right to work verification in the EU.

The second place companies stumble is time. A residence title that expires during a deployment turns lawful employment into unlawful employment without anything changing on site. A deadline list carrying the expiry date of every title with an eight week lead is the cheapest protection against the most expensive offence. For seasonal crews there is the added point that the time limits come from two separate statutes, as seasonal employment in Germany sets out.

An inspection cannot be prevented, but its outcome is decided months earlier, in the personnel file rather than in the conversation at the gate. Which documents Werklist keeps per worker, and on what date each of them expires, is set out on our employers page.