How to Compute SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG Contributions (2026)

SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG are the three deductions on every Philippine payslip, and if you run a business you have almost certainly computed them before. What most owners are never shown is the pattern that connects all three, and the single number they add up to that changes how you price your work: the true cost of an employee, which is well above their salary.

So this is not a lecture on what the letters stand for. It is the practical version. One idea that makes all three tables readable at a glance, the current 2026 figures, and a worked payday that shows you both what your employee takes home and what the hire actually costs you. If the tables have ever felt more complicated than the arithmetic behind them, that is by design, not a reflection of you, and it clears up fast.

It is worth getting right, because the cost of a mistake is real. Underremit and you face penalties and surcharges. Miscompute an employee's share and you have quietly taken money that was not yours to take, or left them short at exactly the moment they need a hospital, a pension, or a housing loan. This is not just compliance. It is the part of payroll where you are looking after the people who show up for you.

What these three actually pay for

It helps to remember what your employee receives, because that is what turns this from a burden into something worth doing carefully. SSS is their social security: sickness, maternity, disability, retirement pension. PhilHealth is their health coverage when they or a family member is admitted. Pag-IBIG is a savings fund they can borrow against for housing, and it earns dividends over time. You are the one who makes each of these real for them, month after month, by computing it correctly and remitting it on time.

The one idea that makes all three click

Every one of the three follows the same shape. Each is a percentage of a defined base, shared between you and your employee, and kept inside a floor and a cap. Learn that pattern once and the tables stop being a puzzle. What changes from one to the next is only the percentage, the base, and where the floor and cap sit.

One caution before the numbers. The figures below are the 2026 rules as they currently stand. Government contribution tables are updated from time to time, so treat this as a plain-language guide, not the final authority, and always confirm the current schedules with SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG themselves. This is general education, not tax or legal advice.

SSS: 15 percent of a bracket, not your exact salary

The Social Security System (SSS) contribution in 2026 is 15 percent of the employee's Monthly Salary Credit (MSC). The employee shoulders 5 percent and you, the employer, shoulder 10 percent. The rate reached 15 percent under Republic Act 11199, the Social Security Act.

The one twist that trips people up is the Monthly Salary Credit. SSS does not charge 15 percent of the exact peso you pay. It slots each employee into a bracket based on their monthly pay, and that bracket, the MSC, is what the percentage is applied to. The MSC has a floor of ₱5,000 and a ceiling of ₱35,000, so no matter how much someone earns above ₱35,000, the SSS base stops there.

A worked SSS example

Say an employee earns ₱20,000 a month. Their MSC is ₱20,000. The total contribution is 15 percent of ₱20,000, which is ₱3,000. The employee's 5 percent share is ₱1,000, deducted from their pay. Your 10 percent share is ₱2,000, paid on top by the business. On top of that you also pay a small Employees' Compensation (EC) contribution, a fixed ₱10 to ₱30, which is employer-only. At the very top of the table, an employee at the ₱35,000 ceiling has a 5 percent share of ₱1,750. One more note for larger salaries: the portion of the contribution based on an MSC above ₱20,000 is channeled into the member's Mandatory Provident Fund, a separate retirement savings layer, but the way you compute and remit it does not change.

PhilHealth: 5 percent, split down the middle

PhilHealth in 2026 is 5 percent of the employee's monthly basic salary, and for employed members it is shared equally: 2.5 percent from the employee, 2.5 percent from you. The 5 percent rate is the final scheduled premium under the Universal Health Care Act (Republic Act 11223) and is unchanged from 2025.

PhilHealth has its own floor and ceiling. The income floor is ₱10,000 and the ceiling is ₱100,000. That means anyone earning ₱10,000 or below has a fixed premium of ₱500 a month, and anyone earning ₱100,000 or above is capped at ₱5,000 a month.

A worked PhilHealth example

For the same employee earning ₱20,000, PhilHealth is 5 percent of ₱20,000, which is ₱1,000 in total. Split evenly, the employee pays ₱500 and the business pays ₱500. Simple, once you know the base is the monthly basic salary and the rate is halved between the two of you.

Pag-IBIG: small, flat, and capped early

Pag-IBIG, run by the Home Development Mutual Fund (HDMF), is the gentlest of the three. The employee contributes 2 percent and the employer contributes 2 percent. The catch is that the base is capped at a maximum monthly compensation of ₱10,000, a cap that was doubled from ₱5,000 in early 2024. Because of that low cap, most employees hit the maximum quickly.

A worked Pag-IBIG example

Our ₱20,000 employee earns more than the ₱10,000 cap, so the base is ₱10,000, not ₱20,000. Two percent of ₱10,000 is ₱200. The employee pays ₱200 and the business pays ₱200. The most anyone contributes on the employee side, at standard rates, is that same ₱200. One small exception at the bottom: employees earning ₱1,500 or below contribute only 1 percent, while the employer still pays 2 percent.

Put it together: one employee, one payday

Numbers land better side by side. Here is the full picture for one employee earning ₱20,000 a month, using the 2026 figures above.

• SSS: employee ₱1,000, employer ₱2,000
• PhilHealth: employee ₱500, employer ₱500
• Pag-IBIG: employee ₱200, employer ₱200
• Employee total deducted from pay: ₱1,700
• Employer total paid on top of salary: ₱2,700 (plus the small SSS EC amount)

Read as a decision rather than a chore, this tells you two things at a glance. Your employee who earns ₱20,000 takes home ₱18,300 before withholding tax, because ₱1,700 in contributions comes out of their pay. And the employee who costs you ₱20,000 in salary actually costs the business closer to ₱22,700 a month, before you even reach the 13th month pay and paid leave. Knowing that second number is the difference between pricing your work properly and quietly losing margin on every hire.

Where owners actually get burned

Notice that computing the contributions for a single employee took a few short paragraphs. The difficulty was never the arithmetic. It is the repetition and the timing. You do this for every employee, every cutoff, then remit to three separate agencies on three separate schedules, keep the proof, and reflect all of it in your books so it reconciles at year-end and survives a BIR review. Do it by hand across a growing team and small errors are almost inevitable, and small errors here carry penalties and eroded trust.

This is the quiet argument for keeping payroll and accounting in the same place. When the two are separate, someone has to copy figures between them every single cutoff, and every copy is a chance to be wrong. When they share one set of records, the contribution you computed is already the expense in your books, already the cash you need to set aside, already the number your accountant sees in real time rather than four weeks after the fact.

That is the thinking behind Quenta. It is a cloud accounting platform built for Philippine businesses, and its Payroll module, currently in Early Access, is designed to compute SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG from the same records that run your books, so the deduction, the expense, and the cash impact are one connected story rather than three spreadsheets that have to agree. Quenta is a technology platform, not an accounting firm, so it gives you the visibility and leaves the professional judgment to you and your accountant.

The contributions were never the hard part. Doing them right, for every person, on time, month after month, is the real work. That is what a system is for.

So the next time payday comes and those three letters flash their old dread, remember that each one is only a percentage of a base, split with your employee, inside a floor and a cap. You already understand it. The rest is just making sure it happens correctly, every time, which is a problem worth handing to something built to solve it.

Note: The rates and thresholds here reflect the 2026 rules at the time of writing and are provided for general understanding. Contribution tables are updated periodically, so always confirm the current schedules directly with SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG, and consult your accountant for your specific situation. This article is educational and is not tax, legal, or accounting advice.