United Arab Emirates Statutory social-insurance contributions
Mandatory payroll contributions for an ordinary private-sector employee in United Arab Emirates (AE): employee and employer shares of each statutory branch, with the ceilings and the instrument fixing each rate.
What this value means
The single fact that governs UAE payroll: statutory pension contributions apply to UAE (and GCC) NATIONALS ONLY. This is not an administrative practice, it is in the definitions — Decree-Law 57/2023 Art. 1 defines "Insured" as "Every national person who works for an Employer", and defines the private-sector Employer as one "who employs national employees"; Law 7/1999 Art. 1 says "The Insured: Every UAE national". Expatriates, who are the overwhelming majority of the private-sector workforce, have ZERO pension deduction and ZERO employer pension contribution. A gross-to-net engine that applies any percentage social-insurance deduction to an expatriate is simply wrong. TAX DEDUCTIBILITY IS MOOT, NOT "YES" OR "NO". The UAE levies no personal income tax on employment income, so there is no income-tax base from which an employee contribution could be deducted. Every scheme is returned with tax_deductible null deliberately. Net pay is gross minus the 11% (or 5%) pension for nationals, and nothing at all for expatriates. Do not let a generic payroll model coerce this to true/false. FOUR PARALLEL PENSION REGIMES, ROUTED BY DATE AND BY EMIRATE — this is where engines break. (1) GPSSA / Law 7/1999: 5% + 15%, floor AED 1,000, ceiling AED 50,000. (2) GPSSA / Decree-Law 57/2023: 11% + 15%, floor AED 3,000, ceiling AED 70,000, for those first employed on or after 31 Oct 2023. (3) ADPF / Law 2/2000: 5% + 15%, floor AED 6,000, ceiling AED 100,000. (4) ADPF / Law 18/2023: 11% + 15%, same floor and ceiling, for members from 01/12/2023. The two cut-off dates are DIFFERENT (31 Oct vs 1 Dec 2023) and the two ceilings are DIFFERENT. Routing is by the employee's first registration, not by the current date: Decree-Law 57/2023 Art. 2(2) keeps anyone already insured under Law 7/1999 — and anyone who has drawn a pension or an end-of-service gratuity under it — on the old regime even when they start a brand-new job with a brand-new employer. ABU DHABI IS NOT A GOVERNMENT-SECTOR CARVE-OUT. Emiratis in the PRIVATE sector in Abu Dhabi go to ADPF, not GPSSA. The amended wage definition in Law 18/2023 expressly addresses "Active Members working in the private sector". Treating ADPF as government-only, and defaulting Abu Dhabi private employers to the AED 70,000 GPSSA ceiling, understates both the floor (6,000 vs 3,000) and the ceiling (100,000 vs 70,000). THE 2.5% IS A SUBSIDY THRESHOLD, NOT A CEILING AND NOT A RATE CUT. For private-sector employers, the Government bears 2.5 percentage points of the employer's 15% for national employees whose subscription account salary is below AED 20,000 (57/2023 Art. 4(1)(b)). The fund still receives 15%; the employer's cash cost is 12.5%. AED 20,000 tests eligibility for the subsidy — it is not a contribution ceiling, and it is not the AED 70,000 ceiling. Note a real textual divergence: the 1999 text grants the same 2.5% bearing with NO salary threshold stated, while the 2023 text states the AED 20,000 test explicitly. Both are the operative texts of their own regimes. THE UNEMPLOYMENT PREMIUM IS NOT A PAYROLL DEDUCTION. ILOE is the only mandatory branch touching expatriates, and it is flat (AED 5 or AED 10 per month, plus 5% VAT), banded on BASIC salary at AED 16,000, and — critically — self-subscribed. Cabinet Resolution 97/2022 Art. 6 has the service provider issue a policy of at least 12 months and lets the insured choose the payment mechanism and periodicity; the worker pays the insurer directly, typically annually. The employer neither withholds nor remits it. An engine that deducts AED 5 from monthly net pay produces a wrong payslip. The statute also says "up to" AED 5/AED 10 — a cap, not a fixed statutory charge. The AED 16,000 line is a category threshold on basic salary, not a ceiling to cap anything at. CEILINGS HERE DO NOT UPRATE ANNUALLY, AND THAT IS ITSELF THE RISK. None of these figures is indexed; they sit in the statutes and move only when the instrument is amended or when a Minister exercises a delegated power. Decree-Law 57/2023 Art. 5(2) lets the Minister, on Board recommendation, amend the private-sector floor and ceiling by decision; Law 7/1999 Art. 1 gives the Minister the same power after Board approval; Cabinet Resolution 97/2022 Art. 7(2) lets the Cabinet change the ILOE amounts and add categories; Abu Dhabi Art. 15 lets the Executive Council amend and redistribute the contribution rates. A change made under any of these powers would NOT appear in the consolidated statute text — which is exactly the consolidated-text trap in this jurisdiction, and the reason the GPSSA blackout described in caveats matters. SCOPE EXCLUSIONS. ILOE (Cabinet Resolution 97/2022 Art. 2 and Federal Decree-Law 13/2022 Art. 3): investors who own and work at the establishment, domestic workers, temporary-contract workers, under-18s, and citizens meeting superannuation conditions or pensioners in a new job. Pension: minimum age 18 up to retirement age, plus medical fitness on appointment (57/2023 Art. 3(1)). GCC NATIONALS ARE COVERED, AT THEIR HOME COUNTRY'S RATES. A Saudi, Kuwaiti, Bahraini, Omani or Qatari national employed in the UAE is insured under the GCC insurance protection extension system: the UAE employer registers them with their HOME state's scheme and pays that scheme's employer rate, capped at the UAE employer share (15%), with the employee bearing any difference. There is therefore no single UAE rate for a GCC national — it is a function of nationality. DIFC codifies the parallel obligation directly: Art. 65(1) requires DIFC employers to register UAE and GCC nationals with GPSSA. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: Material and mandatory. (1) AE-AZ Abu Dhabi — Emiratis in BOTH the government and the private sector register with the Abu Dhabi Pension Fund under Law No. 2 of 2000 as amended by Law No. 18 of 2023, not with GPSSA. Rates match the federal ones (5%+15% legacy, 11%+15% new) but the private-sector floor is AED 6,000 and the ceiling AED 100,000 (versus AED 3,000 / AED 70,000 at GPSSA), the new-regime cut-off is 01/12/2023 (versus 31/10/2023 federally), there is no 2.5% government subsidy for private employers, and the legacy regime adds a 6% Emirate-budget contribution that is not an employer cost. (2) AE-SH Sharjah — the Sharjah Social Security Fund covers Sharjah GOVERNMENT-sector Emiratis only; Sharjah private-sector Emiratis remain with GPSSA, so ordinary private-sector payroll is unaffected. (3) DIFC (a financial free zone within AE-DU Dubai) — DIFC Employment Law No. 2 of 2019 imposes a mandatory employer-only monthly Qualifying Scheme contribution (DEWS) of 5.83% of Monthly Basic Wage for the first 5 years and 8.33% thereafter, with Basic Wage floored at 50% of Monthly Wage; UAE and GCC nationals go to GPSSA instead under Art. 65, with a top-up rule where the GPSSA employer contribution falls short of Core Benefits by at least AED 1,000/month. (4) ADGM (a financial free zone within AE-AZ Abu Dhabi) — separate employment regulations and its own end-of-service/savings regime; not researched here. (5) Health insurance mandates are emirate-level (Dubai Law 11/2013, Abu Dhabi's own scheme, and the remaining emirates from 1 Jan 2025) with no rate anywhere. GPSSA covers the other emirates: Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah and Umm Al Quwain, plus federal government employers. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: Deliberately returned with null rates rather than a number: (1) Employer health insurance — mandatory nationwide for private-sector employees but there is no statutory percentage; the premium is priced per head by a licensed insurer against a minimum benefit package, so any "rate" would be invented. (2) Work injury / occupational disease — there is no separately rated branch in the UAE at all; for nationals it is financed inside the pension contribution, for expatriates it is a direct employer liability under the Labour Law. Vendor tables showing a UAE work-injury rate are fabricating one. (3) End-of-service gratuity — an accrued termination entitlement, not a contribution; nothing is withheld or remitted monthly, and I did not read the Labour Law article, so no section number is asserted. (4) GCC nationals working in the UAE — no single UAE rate exists; liability follows the home state's scheme, capped at the UAE employer share, so the rate is nationality-dependent and must be resolved per home country. (5) Sharjah Social Security Fund — covers Sharjah GOVERNMENT-sector Emiratis only and is therefore out of scope for an ordinary private-sector employee; its rates were not researched and no figure is offered. (6) ADGM (Abu Dhabi Global Market) — separate employment regulations with their own end-of-service/savings regime; not researched, no figures offered. (7) Whether the ADPF 6% Emirate-budget contribution under Art. 15(1)(c) continues for post-01/12/2023 members — Art. 15(2) does not repeat it and the amending law's text does not resolve it either way; not asserted. (8) The Emiratisation (Nafis) non-compliance financial contribution payable by employers of 50+ staff that miss Emirati hiring targets — it is a conditional penalty, not a per-employee payroll contribution, and the current amounts were not verified, so no figure is given. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: None identified. No already-legislated future change to any UAE contribution rate, floor or ceiling was found with an effective date after 2026-08-08, and no transitional provision in the instruments read schedules a further step. What exists instead is a set of live delegated powers that can change these values at short notice without amending the parent statute, and which should drive the re-verify cadence: Decree-Law 57/2023 Art. 4(1)(b) (Cabinet may amend or cancel the 2.5% government bearing and set its conditions) and Art. 5(2) (Minister may amend the private-sector floor and ceiling on Board recommendation); Decree-Law 57/2023 Art. 4(2) (Cabinet may cap the annual increase in the subscription account salary on Board recommendation); Law 7/1999 Art. 1 (Minister may amend the minimum and maximum after Board approval); Cabinet Resolution 97/2022 Art. 7(2) (Cabinet may amend ILOE subscription and compensation values and introduce new categories); Abu Dhabi Law 2/2000 Art. 15, Second (Executive Council may amend and redistribute employer and member rates on Board recommendation). Because a decision under any of these would not surface in the consolidated statute text, re-verification must hit the authorities' own rate pages, not the legislation portal. Suggested re-verify deadline: 2026-11-08, and sooner if GPSSA becomes reachable. SOURCING CAVEATS: VERIFIED BY FETCHING (statute text read directly, verbatim): Federal Decree-Law 57/2023 Arts. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 at https://uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/legislations/2254 (issue 02 Oct 2023, effective 31 Oct 2023, Gazette 762) — the 11%/15%/2.5% split, the AED 3,000/70,000 private-sector limits, the AED 100,000/150,000 government limits, the "Insured = every national person" definition and the Art. 2(2) carve-outs are quoted from that page. Federal Law 7/1999 Arts. 1 and 2 at https://uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/legislations/1111 — the 5%/15% split and the AED 1,000/50,000 private-sector limits. Federal Decree-Law 13/2022 Art. 3 at https://uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/legislations/1596 and Cabinet Resolution 97/2022 Arts. 1, 2, 6, 7 at https://uaelegislation.gov.ae/en/legislations/1599 — the AED 5/AED 10 tiers, the AED 16,000 boundary, the exclusions and the self-subscription collection mechanism. Abu Dhabi Law 18/2023 in the Abu Dhabi Official Gazette 11th Edition (https://www.abudhabi.gov.ae/-/media/sites/adgov/gazettes/2023/en/11th-edition-english-2023.ashx), PDF text-extracted locally — amended Art. 2 wage definition and Art. 15 contribution rates including the 01/12/2023 cut-off and the 6% budget contribution. DIFC Employment Law No. 2 of 2019 Arts. 65 and 66(7)–(8) from the official PDF linked off https://www.difc.com/business/laws-and-regulations/legal-database/difc-laws/employment-law-difc-law-no-2-of-2019. ILOE premium tiers, VAT treatment and benefit caps also read on the official scheme site https://www.iloe.ae/. WHAT I COULD NOT READ — THIS IS THE MATERIAL GAP. gpssa.gov.ae is unreachable from here: every URL, including the homepage, returns an F5 "Request Rejected" block page, and it does so through a real browser as well as through automated fetches, which points to geo-blocking of non-UAE traffic rather than bot detection. I therefore could NOT open the administering authority's own current rate page or its FAQ on contribution-salary limits. mohre.gov.ae refused TCP connections outright (ECONNREFUSED), so MOHRE's unemployment-insurance and basic-health-insurance guidance pages were also unreadable. The ADPF "Guide for Entities" PDF on pension.gov.ae is a dead link (the site's own error handler). WHAT THAT MEANS FOR CONFIDENCE. Every pension and unemployment figure above comes from the instrument itself on official government legislation portals, which is primary and is why confidence is "primary" — but statute text cannot catch an administrative uprating. Both pension laws expressly empower the Minister to amend the contribution-salary floor and ceiling by decision (57/2023 Art. 5(2); 7/1999 Art. 1), and the Cabinet to amend the ILOE amounts (97/2022 Art. 7(2)). If such a decision has been issued, it would live on GPSSA's rate pages and nowhere in the text I read. The specific figures most exposed to this are the Law 7/1999 AED 50,000 ceiling and AED 1,000 floor, which have stood since 1999 and are the likeliest candidates for a quiet administrative uprating. Treat the four pension rate splits and the two cut-off dates as solid; treat the 1999-regime floor and ceiling as statute-confirmed but not authority-confirmed, and re-check them the moment GPSSA is reachable (ideally from a UAE egress IP). The health-insurance branch is the one item resting on secondary sources for its scope and dates; it carries no rate, so nothing numeric depends on it. The end-of-service gratuity branch deliberately asserts no article number because I did not open Federal Decree-Law 33/2021. English texts on uaelegislation.gov.ae carry the portal's own disclaimer that the Arabic original prevails in case of conflict. Researched against primary instruments and independently challenged by a second verification pass before being served (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://asiaref.dev/v1/ae/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/ae/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
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