Namibia Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN NAMIBIA. 1. THE COMPLETE MANDATORY SET FOR AN ORDINARY PRIVATE-SECTOR EMPLOYEE IS: SSC Maternity/Sick Leave/Death Benefit Fund 1.8% (0.9% + 0.9%, on basic wage, floored and capped) + the Employees' Compensation Fund annual assessment (employer-only, risk-rated) + the VET Levy 1% of payroll where annual payroll reaches N$1,000,000. The employee's payslip deduction is between N$4.50 and N$99.00 a month and NOTHING ELSE. 2. NAMIBIA'S EMPLOYEE SOCIAL DEDUCTION IS A NARROW BAND, NOT A PERCENTAGE THAT SCALES. Because the base is basic wage floored at N$500 and capped at N$11,000, the employee's contribution is N$4.50 at the bottom and N$99.00 from N$11,000 upwards. Most Namibian employees are at or near the cap. An engine that applies an uncapped 0.9% is wrong for the majority of the workforce. 3. THERE IS NO STATE PENSION CONTRIBUTION AND NO STATE MEDICAL CONTRIBUTION, AND THIS IS A LEGISLATIVE FACT, NOT AN OVERSIGHT. s21(1) of the Social Security Act 34 of 1994 makes a registered employee a member of three funds: the MSD Fund, the National Medical Benefit Fund and the National Pension Fund. PART VI (NATIONAL MEDICAL BENEFIT FUND) AND PART VII (NATIONAL PENSION FUND) HAVE NEVER BEEN BROUGHT INTO FORCE — the Act was brought into operation on 15 January 1995 by GN 7/1995 expressly excepting those two Parts. Only the MSD Fund is live. Anyone reading s21(1) alone will conclude that Namibia has a national pension contribution and a national medical contribution. It does not. 4. THE CEILING IS NOW ON A PUBLISHED FOUR-YEAR ESCALATION PATH, WHICH IS UNUSUAL AND EASY TO MISS. GN 236 of 2026 substitutes a Table into the "basic wage" proviso setting the maximum basic salary for four successive financial years: 2025/2026 N$12,500 effective 1 March 2026; 2026/2027 N$14,000 effective 1 March 2027; 2027/2028 N$15,000 effective 1 March 2028; 2028/2029 N$16,000 effective 1 March 2029. At 0.9% those give maximum monthly contributions of N$112.50, N$126.00, N$135.00 and N$144.00 per side. The floor stays at N$500 (N$4.50 per side) throughout. Diarise 1 March each year to 2029. 5. THE GAZETTED DATE AND THE APPLIED DATE DIVERGE RIGHT NOW, AND THIS RECORD SERVES THE APPLIED ONE. GN 236 was signed on 2 July 2026 and gazetted on 15 July 2026, but states that it takes effect FROM 1 MARCH 2026 — retrospectively. The Social Security Commission has said that because of the delayed gazetting the N$12,500 ceiling will be implemented only from 1 SEPTEMBER 2026, so employers apply it from the September 2026 payroll cycle. Payrolls for March to August 2026 have therefore been run on the N$11,000 ceiling (max N$99 per side), which is what this record serves as the operative figure at 11 August 2026. From the September 2026 payroll the ceiling is N$12,500 and the maximum is N$112.50 per side. An engine reading only the Gazette would have over-deducted for six months; an engine reading only the Commission's guidance will under-deduct from September. Both dates matter. 6. THE MINIMUM IS A DEEMING PROVISION. The proviso deems the employee to have been paid at least N$500, so a very low-paid or part-month employee still generates N$4.50 a side. There is no de minimis exemption. 7. THE EMPLOYER'S 0.9% IS UNRECOVERABLE, ON PAIN OF PROSECUTION. s21(11): an employer who recovers from an employee any contribution payable by the employer commits an offence. s21(12) separately criminalises deducting the employee's share and failing to pay it over. 8. THE EMPLOYEES' COMPENSATION FUND IS NOT A MONTHLY PERCENTAGE AND HAS NO NATIONAL RATE. It is an annual assessment on declared annual wages, set per employer at the Commission's discretion by reference to the estimated risk and cost of accidents (s69(2)), and adjustable up or down for an individual employer's accident record (s71). Do not put a national ECF percentage on a payslip. 9. THE VET LEVY IS A THIRD, SEPARATE REGISTRATION. 1% of annual payroll, employers with payroll of N$1,000,000 or more, collected monthly in arrears by the Namibia Training Authority by the 20th — a different collector, a different due date and a different base from the SSC contribution. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: none. The SSC contribution, the ECF assessment and the VET Levy are all national with no regional or local variation. The only rate differentiation in the system is by INDUSTRY RISK, and only within the ECF assessment. Do not model regions as a rate dimension. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: EMPLOYEES' COMPENSATION FUND ASSESSMENT RATES — all nulls, and this is a structural refusal. s69(2) puts the percentage in the Commission's discretion by risk class, and s71 permits individual variation and rebates. No gazetted national tariff schedule was found and none is served. An employer must take its rate from its own ECF assessment notice. THE ECF ANNUAL EARNINGS CEILING — not served as a number. An annual per-employee cap on assessable wages exists and is periodically revised alongside the SSC ceilings (the two were last moved in the same cycle, effective 1 March 2025). The figure circulating for the current cycle is approximately N$101,625 per employee per annum, but it comes from payroll-vendor bulletins rather than from a Government Notice this record opened, so it is named here for orientation only and deliberately not placed in a ceiling field. Confirm it against the Ministry's notice before relying on it. NATIONAL PENSION FUND AND NATIONAL MEDICAL BENEFIT FUND CONTRIBUTIONS — no branches, no nulls. Parts VI and VII of the Act have never commenced; creating nulled branches would wrongly imply live obligations awaiting a rate. OCCUPATIONAL PENSION AND MEDICAL AID — not statutory. Private retirement funds and medical aid schemes are contractual and regulated by NAMFISA; typical rates are not statutory rates and are not served. SOURCING CAVEATS, STATED PLAINLY — AND WHY THIS RECORD IS MARKED SECONDARY: - The Social Security Act 34 of 1994 and the Employees' Compensation Act 30 of 1941 were read in full from the Legal Assistance Centre's annotated statute prints, and every section quoted above is verbatim from those texts. - Government Notice No. 236 of 2026 was read directly from Government Gazette No. 8975 of 15 July 2026, and the four-year Table was verified by rendering the gazette page to an image rather than relying on the text layer, because the text layer misaligns the effective-date column. (Note also that the running head on page 3 of that gazette misprints the date as "15 July 2926" — a typographical error in the Gazette itself, not in this record.) - THE 0.9% + 0.9% RATE ITSELF WAS NOT READ OFF THE REGULATIONS. GN 236 amends only the "basic wage" proviso; the contribution percentage sits elsewhere in the GN 198/1995 regulations as amended, and no copy of those regulations was reachable — the Social Security Commission's website publishes the Acts but not the regulations, and the Legal Assistance Centre's regulation index did not resolve. The 1.8% total split 0.9%/0.9% is as stated by payroll statutory bulletins and Namibian reporting, and is arithmetically consistent with the maxima and minima those same sources publish against the gazetted N$500 and N$11,000 figures (0.9% x 500 = N$4.50; 0.9% x 11,000 = N$99.00; 0.9% x 12,500 = N$112.50). - The GN 275 of 1 October 2024 notice (Government Gazette No. 8461), which set the N$500 floor and N$11,000 ceiling from 1 March 2025, is identified from the amendment chain recited verbatim in GN 236 and from payroll bulletins reporting its contents; the notice itself was not opened. - The VET Levy rate, threshold and due date are from the Namibia Training Authority's own page — the administering authority — but the 27 January 2014 imposition notice and Government Notices Nos 5 and 6 were not opened. - No ECF assessment tariff or earnings-ceiling notice was reached. 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/na/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://afriref.dev/v1/na/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/na/social-contributions

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