Egypt Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

HEADLINE. For an ordinary private-sector employee OUTSIDE the six comprehensive-health-insurance governorates, the mandatory Law 148/2019 deduction is 11% employee (9 pension + 1 sickness + 1 end-of-service bonus) and 18.75% employer (12 + 3.25 + 1.5 + 1 unemployment + 1 bonus), both on a single contribution wage banded between EGP 2,700 and EGP 16,700 per month from 1 January 2026. Maximum monthly employee deduction EGP 1,837.00; maximum monthly employer cost EGP 3,131.25. Branch rates have been unchanged since 1 Jan 2020; only the band moves. Inside a live UHIS governorate the totals are NOT the same as the Law 148 headline for anyone earning above the Law 148 ceiling: the Law 148 branches stop at that ceiling and the UHIS 4%/1% does not.75% — but composed differently: the medical-care components migrate from NOSI to UHIA. Employer 12 + 0.5 (work injury financial rights only) + 0.25 (sickness wage compensation only) + 1 + 1 + 4 (UHIS) = 18.75%. Employee 9 + 1 (bonus) + 1 (UHIS) = 11%. What is genuinely extra there is the employee-borne dependant loading: 3% for a non-working spouse, 1% per dependant. WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG HERE. 1. The floor is a FLOOR, not an exemption threshold. Below EGP 2,700 of actual pay you still contribute on EGP 2,700 — no small-earnings exemption, no opt-out. The separate 30-employee threshold for the Emergency Relief Fund is a threshold on the employer, not on pay; conflating the two is the classic error. The private-sector statutory minimum wage is EGP 7,000/month (set by the National Wages Council, effective 1 March 2025, still binding as at August 2026), well above the insurance floor, so for a compliant employer the floor almost never binds — which is precisely why engines never test it and then fail on part-timers and mid-month starters. A rise to EGP 8,000 has been approved for the public sector from July 2026; the National Wages Council had taken no private-sector decision as at 8 Aug 2026, so EGP 7,000 remains the binding private floor. 2. ONE wage, ONE ceiling. Law 79/1975 had two wages (basic and variable) with two separate ceilings. Law 148/2019 replaced them with a single أجر الاشتراك. Legacy logic carrying two ceilings will mis-deduct. Conversely the Emergency Relief Fund still runs on the abolished 'basic wage', so Egypt needs a basic-wage figure the social-insurance system no longer produces. 3. The employer rate is not a constant, and it varies DOWNWARD as well as up. Work injury is risk-rated 1.5%–2.0% by hazard (Art. 46(2)), but the 0.5% financial-rights component is HALVED for public bodies, and may be halved for a private employer with Authority approval, where the employer pays injury wage compensation and transport itself. Sickness is 3.25% private / 3% government (Art. 70), and drops to 1.25% for an employer permitted to provide treatment and medical care itself (Art. 70 final paragraph). 18.75% is a default, not a fixed number. 4. Employer-only branches are invisible on the payslip and get dropped: unemployment 1%, work injury 1.5%, and the two Ministry-of-Labour levies (Emergency Relief Fund 1% of basic wage at 30+ employees; Training Fund per-head charge). Neither Ministry-of-Labour levy is collected by NOSI or appears on the social-insurance return. Separately, the UHIS solidarity contribution of 0.25% of annual turnover is an entity-level levy that is nationwide and must not be added to the payroll percentage. 5. Geography changes the COMPOSITION, not the total. The Comprehensive Health Insurance System is live in six of Egypt's governorates and REPLACES the medical-care components of the Law 148/2019 sickness and work-injury branches rather than stacking on them. See the comprehensive_health_insurance scheme. The original version of this record treated it as additive; it is not. 6. DEDUCTIBILITY. Employee social-insurance contributions are relieved before income tax: Income Tax Law No. 91 of 2005, Art. 13, exempts contributions retained under the social insurance law or alternative systems established under Law 64 of 1980. Order of operations matters — deduct the 11% from gross first, then apply the personal exemption and the progressive salary-tax brackets. Computing tax on gross overstates liability materially at every income level. Art. 13's separate 15%-of-net-revenue / EGP 10,000 cap applies to VOLUNTARY life and health insurance premiums, not to the compulsory social-insurance share; do not apply that cap here. The treatment of the UHIS 1% employee share was not confirmed. The employer-side UHIS solidarity contribution is expressly NON-deductible for corporate income tax. 7. NATIONALITY. Coverage is not nationality-limited, unlike the Gulf schemes. Foreign nationals employed under Egyptian contracts are covered from the commencement of the Executive Regulation. The exemption is treaty-based, not nationality-based: a foreign employee whose home country has a totalization agreement with Egypt is relieved on producing a home-country coverage certificate. Reported agreement countries — Cyprus, France, Greece, Morocco, Netherlands — are adviser-sourced, not read from a treaty register; re-verify before relying. DISCREPANCY FLAGGED: several advisers state the foreign-national employee rate as 11.5% rather than 11%. The verbatim branch arithmetic in Arts. 19, 36 and 70 gives 11% with no foreigner-specific loading anywhere in the Law. Treat 11% as operative and 11.5% as unexplained. 8. CONSOLIDATED-TEXT WATCH. One live statute-versus-authority conflict, corrected from the original record's 'none found': UHIA's own current rate page grounds its 4% employer charge in Law No. 79 of 1975, which Law 148/2019 repealed with effect from 1 Jan 2020. The rate on that page is current; its statutory citation is not. Otherwise the Law 148/2019 branch rates have not been superseded by regulation and NOSI's announcement agrees with the Executive Regulation's uprating formula. The instability is in the BAND, which moves every 1 January by formula rather than by fresh statute — so a stale ceiling, not a stale rate, is the realistic failure mode. SCOPE. Everything above is for an ordinary private-sector employee under an Egyptian contract. Excluded: irregular workers (Art. 2 رابعاً — insured 9% and public treasury 12%, both of the MINIMUM contribution wage, per Art. 19(3), plus a separate fund under Labour Law 14/2025 funded from construction, contracting and mining activity); business owners, directors and professionals (Art. 19(2), 21% self-borne); Egyptians working abroad (also Art. 19(2)); pensioners and survivors, who pay 1% and 2% of pension respectively into sickness insurance; and public-sector employees, whose sickness employer rate is 3%. RELATED-BUT-NOT-A-CONTRIBUTION. Labour Law No. 14 of 2025, Art. 12 entitles workers to an annual periodic raise of not less than 3% of the insurance wage (الأجر التأميني), with reduction or exemption available through the National Wages Council under Arts. 102–104. That is a wage obligation, not a contribution, but it feeds the Emergency Relief Fund basic-wage formula from April 2026 and raises the contribution base, so it belongs in the same calculation chain. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: Contribution RATES under Law 148/2019 are uniform nationally — no governorate-level variation, no regional funds, no employer-set components. The employer TOTAL is likewise uniform at 18.75%. What varies by governorate is the COMPOSITION of that total, not its size. In the six governorates where the Comprehensive Health Insurance System (Law 2/2018) is live, the medical-care components migrate from NOSI to UHIA: - work injury falls from 1.5% to 0.5% (Law 148/2019 Art. 46(1) expressly excludes UHIS-covered workers from the 1% medical-care contribution), hazard-raisable to 1%; - sickness falls from 3.25%/1% to 0.25% employer and nil employee (the 4% medical-care allocation being provided by UHIA); - UHIS adds employer 4% and employee 1% on the same capped contribution wage. Employer total 18.75% and employee total 11% are unchanged. Genuinely additive: employee-borne dependant loadings of 3% for a non-working spouse and 1% per dependant, which have no Law 148/2019 equivalent. LIVE as at 8 August 2026, verified today against the authority's own branch directory (Phase 1, six governorates): Port Said (EG-PTS), Luxor (EG-LX), Ismailia (EG-IS), South Sinai (EG-JS), Suez (EG-SUZ, three branches), Aswan (EG-ASN). PHASE 2, in preparation, NOT commenced — no branch exists on the authority's directory: Minya (EG-MN), Matrouh (EG-MT), Damietta (EG-DT), Kafr El-Sheikh (EG-KFS), North Sinai (EG-SIN). PHASE 3 announced, not commenced: Alexandria (EG-ALX), Beheira (EG-BH), Qena (EG-KN), Sohag (EG-SHG). Cairo (EG-C) and Giza (EG-GZ) — where most formal private-sector employment sits — are NOT in the system, so the default national answer uses the non-UHIS composition. Verify a governorate's live date before switching composition. The UHIS solidarity contribution (0.25% of annual turnover) is NOT geographically phased: it is nationwide from 12 July 2018 regardless of whether the payroll system is live in the entity's governorate. The Emergency Relief Fund (Law 156/2002) varies by EMPLOYER SIZE, not by region: 30 or more employees. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: 1. TRAINING FUND (Labour Law 14/2025, Arts. 20–21) — rate_employer and rate_total returned NULL. Art. 21 says only 'a fixed proportion per worker' and Art. 20 delegates the fund's financing to a Prime Minister's decision that could not be located as at 8 Aug 2026. The EY-reported 0.25% of the minimum social-insurance wage with an EGP 10 floor and EGP 30 cap is recorded in the scheme notes as unverified adviser commentary, not as a value. THIS REFUSAL IS MAINTAINED after re-checking; searches for a 2026 implementing decision returned nothing. 2. WORK-INJURY HAZARD SCHEDULE — the statutory default 1.5% (1% medical care + 0.5% financial rights) and the 2.0% statutory maximum are stated from the verbatim text of Art. 46, but per-activity rates are refused: Art. 46(2) delegates the risk-rating of the 0.5% component to the Executive Regulation, whose hazard schedule was not read. 3. DIRECTORS' CONTRIBUTION INCOME — the statutory rule (21% of an income self-selected from the schedule annexed to the Executive Regulation, bounded by the EGP 2,700–16,700 band per Art. 1 definition 9) is stated. PwC's contrary claim that directors pay 21% of the MAXIMUM is flagged but NOT adopted, because the Executive Regulation's income schedule — the only instrument that could impose such a floor on this sub-category — was not read. 4. EMERGENCY RELIEF FUND 2026 BASIC-WAGE FORMULA — the Egyptian Labour Authority corrigendum of 8 April 2026 (basic 2026 = basic 2025 + 3% of actual insurance salary, retrospective to January 2026) is reported in the scheme notes as adviser-sourced and expressly NOT verified. The issuing instrument was not reached. The 1% rate, basic-wage base, 30-worker threshold and Art. 7 penalty ARE verified at article level. 5. 2027 VALUES — given as formula outcome and flagged as unannounced, not as current values. The Art. 19 seven-year rate escalation is flagged as expected-but-unconfirmed and is deliberately NOT reflected in any rate field. 6. FOREIGN-NATIONAL 11.5% — not adopted. Several advisers state it; the verbatim branch arithmetic produces 11% and contains no foreigner-specific loading. Reported as an unresolved discrepancy rather than picked. 7. TOTALIZATION-AGREEMENT COUNTRY LIST — Cyprus, France, Greece, Morocco, Netherlands is adviser-sourced, not read from a treaty register; marked secondary. 8. EXECUTIVE REGULATION GAZETTE CITATION — the previous record cited 'PM Decree No. 2437 of 2021, Official Gazette No. 38 bis (b), 28 Sep 2021'. That decree text was NOT read and the gazette reference could not be independently confirmed, so it has been REMOVED from the instrument fields and the band is now attributed to what is actually verifiable: Law 148/2019 Art. 1 definition 8 (which delegates the minimum and maximum to the Executive Regulation) plus NOSI's own announcement of the values. The 15%-per-year-for-seven-years formula is corroborated by PwC and reproduces every observed step exactly, but was not read from the regulation. NOTE ON REFUSALS WITHDRAWN: the previous record refused to state the UHIS / Law 148 sickness and work-injury interaction. That refusal is WITHDRAWN — Law 148/2019 Art. 46(1) contains an express carve-out for UHIS-covered workers and Art. 70's allocation clause plus the authority's own component breakdown settle the rest. Refusing a knowable value is as bad as guessing. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: TWO separate changes are due on 1 January 2027 and are commonly confused with each other. (A) FINAL BAND UPRATING — 1 Jan 2027. The Executive Regulation raises the floor and ceiling by 15% on 1 January each year for SEVEN years beginning 1 Jan 2021; the 2027 uprating is the seventh and last. Applying the observed rule (multiply by 1.15, round UP to the next EGP 100 — which reproduces every step to date exactly, including 2,300 × 1.15 = 2,645 → 2,700 and 14,500 × 1.15 = 16,675 → 16,700) gives a floor of EGP 3,200 and a ceiling of EGP 19,300 from 1 Jan 2027. PwC publishes the same two figures. NOSI had issued no confirming announcement as at 8 Aug 2026 — the 2026 values were announced on 30 Nov 2025, so expect the 2027 announcement around Nov/Dec 2026. Some secondary sources quote the unrounded EGP 19,205; do not use it. CLIFF AFTER 2027: the seven-year mechanism expires with the 2027 uprating. From 1 Jan 2028 there is NO automatic formula and a fresh instrument will be required. An engine that extrapolates 15% into 2028 will be wrong. Set a hard re-verify for Q4 2027. (B) FIRST CONTRIBUTION-RATE ESCALATION — expected 1 Jan 2027, NOT confirmed. The final paragraph of Law 148/2019 Art. 19 provides verbatim that the contribution percentage is increased every seven years from the date the Law came into force by 1%, divided equally between employer and insured person, provided total contributions do not exceed 26%. The Law came into force on 1 Jan 2020, so the first escalation falls due on 1 Jan 2027 and would take the pension branch from 21% to 22% — employer 12.5%, employee 9.5% — and the headline totals to 19.25% employer and 11.5% employee. FLAGGED, NOT ASSERTED: no implementing decision has been issued, and the seven-year clock could arguably run from publication (Aug 2019) rather than entry into force. Do not code this until NOSI or a decree confirms it, but do not be surprised by it either. (Note the coincidence that this escalation would produce an 11.5% employee rate — the same number advisers wrongly attribute to foreign nationals today. Do not let a 2027 escalation retro-justify a 2026 figure.) (C) PRIVATE-SECTOR MINIMUM WAGE — an increase to EGP 8,000 was approved for the public sector from July 2026. The National Wages Council had taken no private-sector decision as at 8 Aug 2026, so EGP 7,000 remains binding. Not a contribution, but it moves the effective contribution base. RE-VERIFY DEADLINES: 1 Dec 2026 (2027 band announcement plus any Art. 19 escalation decision); rolling, for Comprehensive Health Insurance Phase 2 commencement — check the authority's branch directory, which is the earliest reliable public signal; rolling, for the Training Fund implementing decision and the private-sector minimum wage. SOURCING CAVEATS: Confidence is PRIMARY for the load-bearing content: the Law 148/2019 branch rates were read verbatim from the full Arabic text of Arts. 1, 2, 19, 36, 46, 70 and 86; the band was read from NOSI's own announcement; the UHIS rates, base, employer-share composition and live-governorate list were read from the administering authority's own pages today. Confidence is SECONDARY for three peripheral items, each flagged in place: (a) the Emergency Relief Fund, verified at article level against a reproduction of Law 156/2002 rather than the Official Gazette; (b) the April 2026 Labour Authority corrigendum on deriving the 2026 basic wage, adviser-sourced only; (c) the totalization-agreement country list. The Executive Regulation of Law 148/2019 was NOT read. Three things therefore rest on inference or corroboration rather than the instrument: the 15%-for-seven-years uprating formula, the work-injury hazard schedule, and the contribution-income schedule that governs directors and business owners. The sickness/UHIS substitution is settled by express statutory carve-out for the WORK-INJURY 1% (Art. 46(1)) but by reconciliation rather than express words for the SICKNESS 4% medical-care allocation. The arithmetic closes exactly and the authority's own component breakdown corroborates it, but if the residual 0.25% matters to a specific liability, confirm with NOSI. Access note for future re-verification: uhia.gov.eg serves an INCOMPLETE intermediate certificate chain. Any chain-validating client fails with 'unable to verify the first certificate'. The host is fully reachable once verification is relaxed. Do not record it as unreachable. Researched against primary instruments, then attacked by an independent adversarial verification pass which REFUTED the first version on a value. The corrections that pass proved from the instruments have been applied (2026-08-08). Employee and employer shares are stated separately: the employee figure is what leaves the payslip, the employer figure is cost of employment and is not a deduction.

Get it programmatically

curl https://afriref.dev/v1/eg/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://afriref.dev/v1/eg/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/eg/social-contributions

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