Hong Kong Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN HONG KONG. 1. HONG KONG IS NOT A SOCIAL-INSURANCE JURISDICTION, AND MODELLING IT AS ONE PRODUCES PHANTOM DEDUCTIONS. There is no contributory pension, no health-insurance contribution, no unemployment insurance and no work-injury fund. The complete mandatory payroll contribution set is a single item — MPF — at 5% each side within a band. Any engine that generates a Hong Kong health or unemployment line is inventing it. 2. THE SCHEME IS NOT SYMMETRIC BELOW $7,100 A MONTH, AND THIS IS THE COMMONEST HONG KONG ERROR. Below the minimum relevant income level the EMPLOYEE contributes nothing while the EMPLOYER still contributes 5% of actual relevant income, with no floor on the employer side. employer_matched is set true on the branch because the two rates match across the main band, but it is materially false at the bottom of the income scale. Between $7,100 and $30,000 the two sides match at 5%. Above $30,000 both cap at $1,500. 3. THE CAPS ARE CASH AMOUNTS THAT DO NOT INDEX. $30,000 a month maximum relevant income has stood since 1 June 2014; $7,100 minimum since 1 November 2013. Neither is derived from an average-earnings figure and neither is uprated on a calendar. They change only when the Schedules to the Ordinance are amended, following an MPFA review — so the correct posture is periodic re-verification, not annual indexation and not an assumption of permanence. 4. DAILY-PAID EMPLOYEES ARE ON A DIFFERENT PAIR OF LIMITS THAT DO NOT RECONCILE TO THE MONTHLY ONES. $280 and $1,000 per day. Thirty days at the daily minimum is $8,400, well above the $7,100 monthly minimum, so the two tests genuinely disagree — pick the one matching the wage period rather than converting between them. Weekly-paid employees fall between $1,960 and $7,000 a week. 5. THE 30-DAY CONTRIBUTION HOLIDAY BINDS ONE SIDE ONLY. A new employee is not required to contribute for their first 30 days of employment, nor for the incomplete wage period that follows. The EMPLOYER must contribute from the first day. Suppressing both sides leaves the employer in breach. 6. RELEVANT INCOME IS BROADER THAN BASIC SALARY BUT EXCLUDES TERMINATION PAYMENTS. It includes wages, salary, leave pay, fees, commissions, bonuses, gratuities, perquisites and allowances — so a year-end bonus DOES attract MPF, subject to the cap for that contribution period. It excludes severance payments and long service payments under the Employment Ordinance, non-monetary benefits, reimbursements of employment expenses, and tips not collected by the employer. 7. WORK-INJURY COVER IS COMPULSORY INSURANCE, NOT A CONTRIBUTION. The Employees' Compensation Ordinance requires a policy with an authorised insurer covering the employer's full liability to all employees. The premium is commercial, quoted on trade and payroll, and there is no statutory rate. Failing to hold the policy is a criminal offence. Do not model it as a percentage of pay and do not omit it from a cost-of-employment estimate. 8. THE OFFSETTING MECHANISM WAS ABOLISHED, WHICH CHANGES EMPLOYER COST BUT NOT THE CONTRIBUTION RATE. Employers could historically offset severance and long service payments against accrued employer MPF contributions; that arrangement was ended for service accruing after the transition date. It affects termination cost modelling, not the 5% payroll line, and nothing in this record depends on it. 9. EMPLOYEE CONTRIBUTIONS ARE DEDUCTIBLE FOR SALARIES TAX, UP TO A CAP. Mandatory employee contributions are deductible within the statutory annual limit under the Inland Revenue Ordinance. Employer contributions are a deductible business expense and are not taxable on the employee within the mandatory limits. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: NONE. Hong Kong is a single jurisdiction with one MPF regime applying identically throughout. There is no district or regional variation of any kind. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON, DELIBERATELY. EMPLOYEES' COMPENSATION INSURANCE PREMIUMS — not priced. They are commercially underwritten with no statutory tariff, so there is no rate to serve. The obligation is disclosed so the branch is not silently missing. VOLUNTARY AND TAX-DEDUCTIBLE VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS — all rate fields null. There is no statutory rate; they are contractual or elective. ORSO SCHEMES — not modelled. A minority of employers operate an Occupational Retirement Schemes Ordinance (Cap. 426) scheme with MPF exemption rather than an MPF scheme. Contribution rates in those schemes are set by the scheme rules, not by statute, and cannot be served as a national figure. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE / WATCH LIST. (1) The minimum and maximum relevant income levels are subject to periodic MPFA review and are changed by amending Schedules 2 and 3 to the Ordinance. Both have been static for over a decade, but a review can move them at any time and the change is not tied to a calendar date — this is the single item worth re-checking. (2) The 5% rate itself has never moved since the scheme started in December 2000. (3) The eMPF Platform consolidation is an administrative change to how schemes are operated and does not alter rates, bases or caps. SOURCING CAVEATS. The rate, the contribution table, the minimum and maximum relevant income levels for both monthly and daily-paid employees, the treatment of income below the minimum, the 30-day holiday and the relevant-income inclusions and exclusions are all read from the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority's own current employee contribution page and are quoted above. I did not open the text of Cap. 485 or Cap. 485A themselves, so the Schedule numbers are cited from the standard consolidation rather than verified against the Ordinance. The effective_from date of 1 June 2014 is the date the maximum relevant income level last changed — the 5% rate is older than that and the minimum level changed on 1 November 2013, so the record's effective_from marks the most recent change to any served value rather than the start of the scheme. 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/hk/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://asiaref.dev/v1/hk/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://asiaref.dev/provenance/hk/social-contributions

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The same figure elsewhere: India · Indonesia · Iraq · Israel · Japan · all 28