South Africa Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN SOUTH AFRICA. 1. THE UIF AND SDL BASES BOTH CHANGED ON 1 SEPTEMBER 2024, AND MOST CONSOLIDATIONS (INCLUDING SARS'S OWN GUIDE) HAVE NOT CAUGHT UP. The Revenue Laws Second Amendment Act 44 of 2024 (GG 51828, 24 December 2024) substituted UICA s1 "remuneration" para (b) and SDL Act s3(4)(c) to add paragraph (eD) of the "gross income" definition — the two-pot SAVINGS WITHDRAWAL BENEFIT — to both exclusion lists, with effect from 1 September 2024. National Treasury's Explanatory Memorandum on the Bill states the purpose in terms: "Consequential amendments are needed to cater for an exclusion of the 'savings withdrawal benefit' from a liability for the Skills Development Levy payable and Unemployment Insurance Contributions payable by members." This matters because a retirement fund paying a savings withdrawal benefit is an "employer" under para 1 of the Fourth Schedule; without the carve-out the fund would owe SDL and UIF on the withdrawal. CRITICALLY, SARS PAYE-GEN-01-G21 for the 2027 tax year still prints the SDL exclusion list as "paragraph (a), (d), (e) or (eA)" — the authority's own current guide is stale. Corroborate the base from the Act, not the guide. 2. THE UIF BASE EXCLUDES COMMISSION. s1(c) of the UIC Act removes commission from "remuneration" for UIF. SDL's list (s3(4)) does NOT exclude commission — SARS expressly lists commissions as part of the SDL base — and DOES exclude s18(3) learner pay, which UIF no longer excludes. UIF's list also includes gross-income para (cA), which SDL's omits. The UIF and SDL bases are therefore different numbers on the same payslip. Engines that compute one base and reuse it for the other are wrong in both directions. 3. THE UIF CEILING IS NOT UPRATED ANNUALLY. R17 712/month has stood since 1 June 2021 and is the last row of the ceiling table in SARS's 2027-tax-year employer guide. Unlike almost every other country in this dataset, there is no March or January uprating to chase. Do not "index" it. 4. THE CEILING IS A CAP, NOT AN EXEMPTION. Above R17 712/month the employee does not fall out of UIF — contributions are computed on R17 712, giving a flat R177.12 each side. SARS's own guide loosely captions the table "UIF contribution threshold", which is how the cap/threshold confusion propagates. 5. FOUR DIFFERENT R-AMOUNTS THAT ARE NOT THE SAME KIND OF THING. (a) SDL's R500 000 is an employer-level, forward-looking 12-month payroll EXEMPTION threshold under s4(b) — tested monthly, so liability can begin mid-year, and it is not a per-employee floor. (b) COIDA's R668 000 IS a genuine per-employee ANNUAL cap, but on declared annual earnings, not monthly pay. (c) COIDA's R1 621 / R560 are MINIMUM ASSESSMENTS — floors on the amount payable, which bite for very small payrolls whatever the percentage produces. (d) The BCEA "earnings threshold" (R269 600.90 p.a. from 1 May 2026) is a WORKING-TIME threshold with no contribution consequence whatsoever; it appears in payroll software next to these figures and is routinely mistaken for a contribution cap. 6. THE UIF ENTRY TEST IS HOURS, NOT MONEY. s4(1)(a) excludes an employee working under 24 hours a month for that employer — completely, both sides. There is no earnings floor: below 24 hours nothing is due, at 24 hours or more UIF runs from the first rand. That same low-hours employee's pay still counts for SDL and still goes on the COIDA Return of Earnings, because neither has an hours test. 7. NATIONALITY NO LONGER AFFECTS UIF LIABILITY — AND THE STALE CONSOLIDATIONS SAY OTHERWISE. s89 of the Taxation Laws Amendment Act 17 of 2017 deleted UIC Act s4 paragraphs (b) (learners) and (d) (employees who entered the Republic under a contract of service and must be repatriated), with effect from 1 March 2018. The as-assented Treasury print still carries both, so a text read off that print alone is wrong. Operative position: expatriates on fixed-term contracts and learners DO contribute. Note the asymmetry — contribution liability was extended before the benefit-side amendments caught up, so contribution and claim eligibility are not mirror images. 8. THE REMAINING CATEGORY EXCLUSION IS PUBLIC SERVICE. After the 2018 deletions only s4(1)(a) (under 24 hours) and s4(1)(c) — verbatim, "employers and employees in the national and provincial spheres of government" — survive. Local government and public entities are NOT excluded by the UIC Act. (SARS's UIF web page additionally lists municipal councillors and traditional leaders; those are elected/appointed office-bearers who are not "employees" receiving remuneration for services rendered under the UICA s1 definition in any event, so nothing turns on it for an ordinary employee.) 9. EMPLOYEE UIF IS NOT INCOME-TAX DEDUCTIBLE. SARS PAYE-GEN-01-G21 states that employees' tax "is calculated on the balance of remuneration after the deduction of all allowable deductions (e.g. Retirement annuity fund contribution, provident fund contribution, pension fund contribution and donations)". UIF is not among them. PAYE is therefore computed without any relief for the employee's 1%, and net pay is gross less PAYE less UIF, not gross less UIF then taxed. Countries where social contributions are pre-tax are the norm; South Africa is not one of them. 10. COIDA IS EMPLOYER-ONLY AND DEDUCTING IT IS A CRIME, NOT MERELY IRREGULAR. s64(1): an employer who deducts from an employee's earnings, or receives any amount from the employee, to compensate itself for what it owes under the Act is guilty of an offence. Model rate_employee as a hard 0 with no override. 11. COIDA HAS NO SINGLE NATIONAL RATE, BUT THE FULL TARIFF TABLE IS PUBLISHED AND IS SERVED HERE. 13 classes, 103 subclasses, phase-in complete, steady-state rates 0.18% (Class A) to 3.34% (Class I). The class letters are NOT ordered by rate — Class D (0.65) sits below Class C (0.81), and Class I (3.34) exceeds Classes J and K. An engine that assumes alphabetical severity will misprice. Individual employers can be moved off the class rate under s85 (merit rebate or loading) or assessed on another basis under s83(2)(a). 12. Mining and construction employers ARE priced in Schedule A by default (0400 Underground Mining 2.71%, 0411 Coal Mining 0.65%, 0420 Opencast Mining 0.81%, 0500 BLDG&ELEC Construct 2.65%, 0512 Civil Construction 2.65%). COIDA s84(1)(b) is an employer-level, approval-dependent and maintenance-dependent exemption for an employer holding an approved mutual-association policy, NOT a sector exclusion: look the subclass up as the default and treat mutual cover as a per-employer flag to be confirmed, never inferred from industry. Under COIDA s84(1)(b), an employer that has, with the commissioner's approval, insured its full COIDA liability with a licensed mutual association pays no assessment to the Compensation Fund. s30 confines licensing to associations already licensed when the Act commenced — in practice Rand Mutual Assurance (mining) and Federated Employers Mutual Assurance (construction). Those employers pay the mutual's own premium. State, Parliament and provincial authorities are likewise exempt under s84(1)(a). An engine that looks up a subclass rate for a mining or construction employer will produce a number that employer does not owe. 13. SCOPE — WHAT DOES NOT EXIST HERE. South Africa has NO contributory state pension and NO mandatory state health-insurance contribution. The old-age grant is non-contributory and tax-funded (Social Assistance Act 13 of 2004), and the National Health Insurance Act 20 of 2023, though signed, has no contribution mechanism in force. Medical scheme membership is private and voluntary; the medical scheme fees tax credit is a PAYE credit, not a contribution. Retirement funding is via private funds, not a state branch. The complete mandatory national set for an ordinary private-sector employee is exactly: UIF 1% + 1%, SDL 1% employer-only, COIDA employer-only assessment — plus any extended bargaining council levies in a covered sector. 14. COLLECTION MECHANICS. UIF and SDL are remitted to SARS on the monthly EMP201 within 7 days after month-end (UIF code 4141, SDL code 4142). An employer not registered for employees' tax pays UIF directly to the UI Commissioner instead (UICA s9). COIDA is a separate annual filing to the Compensation Fund (CF-2A Return of Earnings), not a payroll remittance, and directors'/members' earnings are declared in their own column. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: none. All three national schemes (UIF, SDL, COIDA) are uniform across all nine provinces — there is no provincial payroll tax, no provincial social-insurance branch and no regional rate variation. The only rate differentiation in the system is by INDUSTRY (COIDA assessment class/subclass, plus the s85 merit rebate/loading applied to the individual employer) and by SECTOR (bargaining council agreements extended under LRA s32, and the mining/construction mutual associations under COIDA s84(1)(b)), never by province or municipality. Do not model ZA-GP/ZA-WC/etc. as rate dimensions. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: I put no number on the following, deliberately. COIDA EMPLOYER ASSESSMENT RATE AS A SINGLE NATIONAL FIGURE — rate_employer stays null. There is genuinely no national rate; it is set per industry subclass. NOTE THAT THIS IS NARROWER THAN THE PREVIOUS REFUSAL: the per-class table itself is NOT refused any more. I recovered all 13 class steady-state rates directly from Schedule A and they are served in full in the scheme notes, with a verified range of 0.18%–3.34%. The earlier refusal of the range was a defect, not caution. BARGAINING COUNCIL LEVIES AND SECTORAL FUNDS — all nulls. Rates are fixed per council in gazetted collective agreements extended under LRA s32, not nationally. Included as a branch so it is visibly present rather than silently missing, but not priced. MUTUAL ASSOCIATION PREMIUM RATES (Rand Mutual, Federated Employers Mutual) — not priced. These are the mutuals' own tariffs set under their licences, not gazetted national tariffs. The statutory route (COIDA s84(1)(b) and s30) is disclosed so an engine knows those employers are off the Schedule A tariff, but the premiums must come from the mutual. ODMWA MINING LEVY — not modelled. Mining employers fall under a separate occupational-disease regime (Occupational Diseases in Mines and Works Act 78 of 1973) with its own employer levy. I did not reach that instrument and will not guess at it. NHI CONTRIBUTIONS — no scheme entry. The National Health Insurance Act 20 of 2023 is signed but no payroll contribution has been legislated or brought into force. Creating a nulled branch would wrongly imply a live obligation. BCEA EARNINGS THRESHOLD (R269 600.90 from 1 May 2026) — cited in notes only, as a contrast, and flagged secondary: I have it from multiple professional sources reporting GN 7384 in GG 54544 of 17 April 2026 (up from R261 748.45), and did not open that gazette myself. It carries no contribution consequence, so nothing in the schemes depends on it. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: 1. COIDA maximum earnings and minimum assessment — re-gazetted most years under s83(8)/s83(2)(b), historically in March/April, effective from 1 March. The current R668 000 / R1 621 / R560 set runs 1 March 2026 to 28 February 2027. SET A RE-VERIFY DEADLINE OF EARLY MARCH 2027 and expect the notice itself around April 2027 (the 2026 notice was signed 21 April and gazetted 24 April 2026, i.e. nearly two months after it took effect — so there is an annual window where the new figure is already operative but not yet published). Note that the minimum assessment did NOT move this year on the commentary record (R1 621 is reported as also applying in 2025/26 while maximum earnings rose from R633 168 to R668 000); the notice restates it as effective 1 March 2026, which is what is served. 2. COIDA TARIFFS — the 2021–2025 phase-in is complete and GN 1282/GN 182 remains the operative tariff instrument; I found no superseding tariff notice, and secondary sources confirm the same Schedule A was applied for the 2025/26 assessment year. But the tariffs are re-makeable at any time by the Minister under s97(2) read with s83(1), so re-check for a fresh notice at each assessment-year rollover. 3. COIDA Amendment Act 10 of 2022 — brought into force in phases by proclamation in January 2026: most sections on 23 January 2026, a group on 1 February 2026, and a further group on 1 April 2026. MATERIALLY FOR THIS DATASET: the provision substituting the COIDA definition of "earnings" to align it with the Fourth Schedule to the Income Tax Act was expressly EXCLUDED from that commencement and has no date fixed. When it is proclaimed, the COIDA assessable base changes and will no longer be the same construct as today's Return-of-Earnings figure. Treat COIDA's base as pending re-verification on any future proclamation. (Commencement detail is from professional commentary, not the proclamation itself — verify the section list before relying on it. gov.za also records the National Health Insurance Act 20 of 2023 as having amended COIDA with effect from 16 May 2024; it creates no payroll contribution, but the COIDA text may have moved.) 4. UIF ceiling — no announced change. Budget 2026 left the 1% + 1% rates and the R17 712 ceiling untouched, and SARS's 2027-tax-year employer guide still carries R17 712 as the last row. There is no scheduled uprating, but the ceiling is changeable at any time by a Minister of Finance notice under UICA s6(2), so re-check after each annual Budget rather than on a fixed calendar. 5. SDL rate — no announced change. Note the standing mechanism in SDL Act s3(1)(b) read with s3(2): the Minister may announce a new rate in the national annual Budget, effective from a date in that announcement, and it holds for 12 months subject to Parliament legislating it. An SDL rate change can therefore arrive by Budget announcement alone, ahead of any amending Act — a Budget-day re-check is warranted. 6. UIF/SDL BASE — watch the annual Revenue Laws / Taxation Laws amendment cycle, not the labour-law cycle. Both bases are amended by tax statutes (the 1 September 2024 change came via a Revenue Laws Second Amendment Act), and the gov.za amendment indexes for Act 4 of 2002 and Act 9 of 1999 are the reliable place to detect them. No amendment later than Act 44 of 2024 is listed for either Act as at this record's date. SOURCING CAVEATS: Everything served is now read from a primary instrument or the administering authority's own current page. Residual limits, stated plainly: - I did not open Government Gazette 44641 itself (the UIF ceiling determination). The amount, effective date and gazette number are confirmed by SARS stating its own operative figure on two pages and by the ceiling table in PAYE-GEN-01-G21; the notice number within that gazette remains unread. - Schedule A rates were recovered by rendering the gazette pages to images and reading them, because the PDF text layer is scrambled OCR. The class-level rates are unambiguous in the rendered images (every subclass in a class carries the same New Rate, and the 2025 column matches it, giving a built-in cross-check). Subclass counts (103 across 13 classes) are my count off those images. - Whether a fresh COIDA tariff notice exists for the 2026 or 2027 assessment year is confirmed only negatively — I found none, and secondary sources report GN 1282/GN 182 still in use — rather than by an authority statement that it remains in force. - The COIDA Amendment Act 10 of 2022 commencement detail and the BCEA earnings threshold are commentary-sourced and flagged as such; nothing in the schemes depends on either. - Rand Mutual and Federated Employers Mutual are identified as the two licensed mutual associations from the statutory constraint in s30(1) (licensing confined to associations licensed at commencement) plus consistent secondary sources; I did not obtain a Ministerial licence list. 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/za/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://afriref.dev/v1/za/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/za/social-contributions

Other South Africa series: SARB repurchase (repo) rate · VAT standard rate · National Minimum Wage (hourly) · Public holidays · CPI inflation (headline, year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Personal income tax brackets · SARB rand exchange rates (official reference) · Prescribed rate of interest · VAT registration threshold · Withholding tax rates

The same figure elsewhere: Tanzania · Togo · Tunisia · Uganda · Zambia · all 34