Under normal circumstances, the liquidated damages are generally 30%. Liquidated damages usually cannot exceed 30% of the actual loss. If it exceeds 30%, the amount of liquidated damages is unreasonable, and the parties may bring a lawsuit to the people's court or submit an arbitration application to the arbitration institution, requesting the people's court or the arbitration institution to reduce it appropriately. If the liquidated damages are lower than the losses caused, the people's court or arbitration institution may increase the liquidated damages at the request of the parties.
The penalty clauses in the contract are mostly agreed by both parties voluntarily, based on the principle of equality and equal compensation without violating the civil law. Liquidated damages are often abused in civil contracts. According to the meaning of both parties, the so-called late payment fee in civil contract is actually liquidated damages. The law does not stipulate the maximum amount of liquidated damages. The agreed liquidated damages not only exert psychological pressure on the parties, but also avoid the trouble of calculating the loss after breach of contract and proving the size of the loss, so that the parties can quickly determine their specific responsibilities. Therefore, if the parties need the court to increase the amount of breach of contract, or the liquidated damages are too higher than the losses, they need to bear the responsibility of proving the size of the losses. According to the basic principles of relevant laws, it is generally believed that the agreed amount of liquidated damages should not exceed 20% of the total amount of the main contract as long as the actual losses are deducted. After the contract is signed, the parties must perform their responsibilities and obligations according to the contents stipulated in the contract. When one party breaches the contract, the other party has the right to ask the other party to pay the late payment fee. The state has provisions on the upper limit of late payment fees in the contract law. Liquidated damages can be divided into statutory liquidated damages and agreed liquidated damages. Statutory liquidated damages refer to the proportion of liquidated damages expressly stipulated in some laws and regulations, and agreed liquidated damages refer to the proportion of liquidated damages agreed by both parties when signing the contract.
Legal basis: 1. Article 29 of the Supreme People's Court's Interpretation on the Application of Several Issues states that if the parties claim that the agreed liquidated damages are too high and request an appropriate reduction, the people's court shall take the actual losses as the basis, comprehensively consider the performance of the contract, the fault degree of the parties, the expected interests and other factors, and make a ruling according to the principles of fairness, honesty and credibility.
If the liquidated damages agreed by the parties exceed 30% of the losses caused, it can generally be regarded as "losses caused by excessive exceeding" as stipulated in the second paragraph of Article 114 of the Contract Law.