Does PhD work experience (scholarship was tax free) count in Postdoc Salary contract (TVL-13) in Germany I did my Ph.D. from Germany where I received a tax-free fellowship, and now I got a postdoc offer in Bremen with salary range TVL-13. The 'Stufe' depends on the previous experience of the employee, but since I was not paying tax and was on a student visa during my Ph.D., will my previous research experience count in this case? 
Would be great if somebody could answer. 
Thanks.
In general, no. The previous work experience you can claim for a higher entry point on the scale needs to be relevant for the job for which you are applying. There are very general rules about this (since the TV-L covers everything from dishwashers to head physicians) so there is some leeway in interpretation, but the basic assumption is that the duties of a postdoc are different enough from those of a PhD student that experience as the latter does not count for the former. Time in education (which a PhD counts as) are also explicitly excluded by the regulation.

It might be possible to claim that even as a PhD student, you already performed duties of a postdoc (independently organizing tutorial sessions for a large class, say, or managing the IT needs of your department), but the usual case for a higher entry point is if you previously were on a fixed-term contract of, say, five years where you received your PhD after year four. Then you could claim the last year as previous experience for a postdoc position at another university.

EDIT: See also my previous answer to a similar question. In short, you need to distinguish between times which must be counted by law (which your PhD experience definitely doesn't fall under) and times which may be counted if argued for specifically, e.g., with arguments as in my second paragraph.