How to Calculate Restaurant Overtime Pay Without a Fine: Weekday / Rest Day / Statutory Day Off

Underpaid overtime is one of the most common restaurant labour-inspection violations

In F&B labour inspections, underpaid overtime is one of the most common reasons for a fine (per years of labour-inspection reports). Under Article 79 of the Labor Standards Act the penalty isn't small; and more to the point, miscalculated overtime is rarely an isolated case — your whole team, across the whole period, gets reviewed together.

First, the "one mandatory + one flexible day off" rule: statutory day off vs rest day

The Labor Standards Act requires 1 statutory day off (例假) plus 1 rest day (休息日) every 7 days. The two are legally very different:

• Statutory day off (例假): in principle employees may not be required to work; only a natural disaster, incident or emergency can compel attendance, and then at double pay plus a make-up day off. This is a red line.
• Rest day (休息日): can be worked with the employee's consent, but at rest-day overtime rates (higher than weekday overtime).

The commonest illegal move in scheduling is treating the statutory day off as a freely movable "holiday" and calling staff in. If your restaurant uses the four-week flexible-hours scheme, the rules for arranging statutory and rest days differ — see Four-Week Flexible Working Hours: Scheduling a Restaurant Without Inviting a Labour Fine.

The overtime tiers, in one table

This table gives the whole picture at a glance; the sections below explain and give worked examples:

Weekday overtime: first 2 hours ×1⅓, third hour onward ×1⅔

For extended hours beyond the normal 8 on a working day, under Article 24 of the LSA:

• The first 2 hours: an extra one-third or more of the hourly wage (i.e. ×1⅓).
• Beyond that: an extra two-thirds or more (×1⅔).

Example: an employee on NT$200/hr works 3 overtime hours → first 2 hrs 200×(4/3)×2 ≈ 533, 3rd hr 200×(5/3)×1 ≈ 333, about NT$866 total. Note "or more": 1⅓ and 1⅔ are legal minimums — rounding down can be treated as underpayment.

Rest-day work: overtime from the first hour

A rest day is different from a weekday — working it is overtime from hour one, with no need to first complete 8 hours. Since the 2018 amendment it's calculated on actual hours; the Article 24 premium is "an additional one-and-one-third or more" for the first 2 hours and "one-and-two-thirds or more" from the third — but hourly-paid and monthly-salaried staff are computed differently:

• Hourly-paid: the wage payable for the rest day = hourly ×4/3 (first 2 hrs) and ×5/3 (3rd hour onward). Example: NT$200/hr, 3 hours → 200×(4/3)×2 + 200×(5/3)×1 ≈ 533 + 333 = about NT$867 (the method in the Taipei Labour Bureau's part-time example).
• Monthly-salaried: the monthly salary already covers that day's base, so the employer pays this premium on top (1⅓ for the first 2 hrs, 1⅔ from the third; the 9th–12th hours carry a higher premium).

Rest-day hours also count toward the monthly extended-hours cap (below). The exact amount differs for hourly vs monthly pay — use the calculator below to try each.

Statutory days off and national holidays: paid double

• Statutory day off (disaster/incident/emergency only): the day's wage is paid double, plus a make-up day off afterward.
• National holiday worked: one extra day's wage (equivalent to double).

Two hidden traps that still get restaurants fined

1. Monthly extended hours over 46: weekday overtime and rest-day hours both count; the monthly cap is 46 hours (relaxable with union or labor-management-meeting consent, but a per-3-month total still applies). A busy peak season makes it easy to overshoot.
2. Wrong base for the hourly rate: a monthly-salaried employee's "hourly wage" = monthly salary ÷ 30 ÷ 8 (i.e. ÷ 240). Get the base wrong and every overtime figure is wrong.

How to get it right — and keep the evidence

To put the formulas above onto real numbers, use the free overtime-pay calculator: enter an hourly or monthly wage and overtime hours, and it computes each tier for weekday / rest day / national holiday (rates adjustable to your pay scheme); to first check whether a day's hours cross the overtime threshold, use the work-hours calculator.

But calculating overtime right depends on the hours data being accurate and kept. What an inspection actually cross-checks is the attendance record, the schedule and the payslip all agreeing. To turn your whole restaurant's attendance into a "day-by-day, auditable, tamper-proof" record, Eatsy Staff Clock-in (currently free) has staff clock in by GPS to capture daily start/end times and auto-compiles hours into an exportable (Excel) report. It won't judge or calculate overtime pay for you — that has to align with your pay scheme and the LSA — but it keeps the single most important raw evidence: when each employee clocked in and out. Eatsy is an operating system built for independent restaurants, and staff clock-in is one part of it.

＊This article is a general overview and not legal advice; for any specific case, rely on the interpretations of the Ministry of Labor and your local labour bureau, and calculate actual overtime per the employment contract and current law.