Singapore CPF for Employers: The Complete Guide

CPF is the one payroll obligation every Singapore employer with even a single Citizen or PR employee carries: contribute up to 37% of wages (17% employer + 20% employee for staff below 55), on monthly wages capped at $8,000, paid to the CPF Board by the 14th of the following month. This guide is the map — what CPF is, who pays, the current rates, the ceilings, how to submit, and what rides along with it.

Last reviewed 10 June 2026 · Sources: CPF Board, MOM, IRAS.

What's on this page

• What CPF is and who must contribute
• The 2026 contribution rates
• What CPF actually costs you per hire
• The wage ceilings: OW and AW
• The AW ceiling, worked through
• New PRs pay graduated rates
• Age changes the rate
• Which payments attract CPF
• How and when to pay
• If you pay late
• What rides along: SDL and SHG
• What CPF is not: FWL and IR8A
• Common employer mistakes

What CPF is and who must contribute

The Central Provident Fund is Singapore's mandatory social-security savings scheme. Every month, you deduct the employee's share from their salary, add the employer's share from your own pocket, and pay both to the CPF Board, where the money lands in the employee's CPF accounts for housing, healthcare and retirement.

The obligation attaches to employees: Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents working under a contract of service, earning more than $50 a month. Full-time, part-time, casual — the contract type, not the headcount or the hours, decides it. A part-timer doing two shifts a week attracts CPF like anyone else.

Two groups fall outside. Foreigners on work passes (EP, S Pass, Work Permit) get no CPF — their cost is the Foreign Worker Levy instead. And an independent contractor under a contract for service handles their own MediSave; you pay their invoice, nothing more.

The contract-of-service test is substance over form, and MOM applies it the same way it does for salary deadlines and annual leave: someone who works your roster, under your direction, with your equipment, is an employee — whatever the document is titled. Relabelling a de-facto employee as a "freelancer" does not switch CPF off; it stacks up arrears with interest until an audit finds them.

Director's fees voted at AGM sit outside CPF; a director's salary under a service contract is inside. When in doubt, classify by how the person actually works, not by what the payment is called.

The 2026 contribution rates

For Citizens and PRs in their third year and beyond, the full rates by age band (CPF Board, from 1 January 2026):

Age	Employer	Employee	Total
Below 55	17%	20%	37%
55 to below 60	16%	18%	34%
60 to below 65	12.5%	12.5%	25%
65 to below 70	9%	7.5%	16.5%
70 and above	7.5%	5%	12.5%

On a $4,000 salary for a 30-year-old: you pay $680, the employee contributes $800 from their salary, and $1,480 a month lands in their CPF accounts. Their take-home is $3,200; their monthly cost to you is $4,680 before SDL and any levies.

Run the same $4,000 salary across the bands and the spread becomes visible:

Age	Employer pays	Employee deducts	Take-home	Monthly into CPF
30	$680	$800	$3,200	$1,480
57	$640	$720	$3,280	$1,360
62	$500	$500	$3,500	$1,000
66	$360	$300	$3,700	$660
71	$300	$200	$3,800	$500

Two practical consequences fall out of this table. First, an older hire is cheaper on the employer side — at 66, $320 a month cheaper than a 30-year-old on the same salary — which is part of the policy design behind the senior-worker bands. Second, the same gross salary produces five different take-home figures, so when a candidate negotiates on take-home rather than gross, the age band silently moves the number.

The senior-worker bands have also been rising year on year as Singapore extends working lives — which is why hardcoding this table into a spreadsheet quietly breaks every January. Pull rates from a maintained source, or at minimum diarise the CPF Board's annual rate announcement.

These figures assume total wages above $750 a month. Below that, the CPF Board phases contributions in by wage band:

Total monthly wages	What applies
$50 or less	No CPF
Above $50 to $500	Employer share only — no employee deduction
Above $500 to $750	Employer share plus a graduated employee share
Above $750	Full rates per the age-band table

The bands matter for exactly the staff a micro-SME is most likely to pay informally: the weekend casual, the student helper, the part-time cleaner on $400 a month. That $400 attracts the employer's CPF share even though nothing is deducted from the employee — paying such staff "off payroll" is not a rounding shortcut, it is an arrears liability accruing interest.

The full age-banded table lives in the CPF contribution rates guide, which reads live from the statutory rate table. To price a specific employee, the CPF calculator does the arithmetic.

What CPF actually costs you per hire

Budgeting a hire on gross salary alone understates the real cost. The employer-side stack for a $4,000, 30-year-old Citizen:

Component	Monthly cost
Gross salary	$4,000.00
Employer CPF (17%)	$680.00
SDL (0.25%, capped)	$10.00
Total employer cost	$4,690.00

That is 17.25% on top of the advertised salary — before annual costs like bonus (which carries its own CPF, within the AW ceiling below) and leave liability. For a five-person team on similar salaries, the CPF line alone is roughly $3,400 a month of employer money that never appears on a payslip as take-home.

The employee-side deduction does appear, and it must appear correctly: the itemised payslip has to show the CPF deduction for the month it was made.

The wage ceilings: Ordinary and Additional Wages

CPF is not payable on every dollar. Two ceilings cap it:

Ceiling	2026 value	Applies to
Ordinary Wage (OW) ceiling	$8,000 per month	Monthly wages — salary, fixed allowances
Additional Wage (AW) ceiling	$102,000 − YTD Ordinary Wages subject to CPF	Annual one-offs — bonus, AWS, leave encashment

The OW ceiling is simple: an employee earning $10,000 a month attracts CPF on $8,000; the last $2,000 is CPF-free for both sides. At below-55 rates that is $740 a month ($340 employer + $400 employee) that stays out of CPF.

Every payment in a payrun is tagged as either OW or AW, and the tag drives which ceiling applies. Salary and fixed monthly allowances are Ordinary Wages. Bonus, AWS and encashed annual leave are Additional Wages. Tag a bonus as OW and you over-deduct from the employee in that month; tag salary as AW and you under-contribute all year — both surface in a CPF Board audit, and both are yours to fix retroactively.

The AW ceiling, worked through

The AW ceiling is a yearly cap that shrinks as ordinary wages grow: whatever OW has attracted CPF this year is subtracted from $102,000, and only the remainder of any bonus attracts CPF.

Three employees, each getting a $20,000 year-end bonus in December 2026:

Monthly OW	YTD OW (12 months)	AW ceiling left	Bonus attracting CPF
$4,000	$48,000	$54,000	all $20,000
$8,000	$96,000	$6,000	$6,000
$10,000 (capped at $8,000)	$96,000	$6,000	$6,000

For the $8,000 earner, $14,000 of the bonus is CPF-free — at below-55 rates, $5,180 of total CPF that does not get paid. Note the third row: OW above the ceiling counts at the capped $8,000 for this subtraction, so a high earner's AW headroom bottoms out at $6,000, never zero.

Timing matters too. The ceiling is computed against the year's wages, so a bonus paid in January runs against a different YTD figure than the same bonus in December — and a mid-year salary change moves the year-end answer. Compute the cap before you commit the bonus number, not after the payrun.

New PRs pay graduated rates

A new Permanent Resident does not jump straight to full rates. For the first two years from the PR grant date, both employer and employee default to graduated rates, reaching full rates in Year 3:

PR year (below 55)	Employer	Employee	Total
Year 1 (G/G)	4%	5%	9%
Year 2 (G/G)	9%	15%	24%
Year 3+	17%	20%	37%

On a $4,000 salary, the same employee costs you $160 in employer CPF as a Year-1 PR and $680 from Year 3 — a $520-a-month difference that belongs in the hiring budget, not discovered at the first payrun.

The year boundary is not the anniversary date — it runs to the end of the month of the grant-date anniversary. And the graduated default can be overridden: employer and employee can jointly apply to the CPF Board to contribute at full rates earlier.

Year 2 sits between: 9% employer + 15% employee on the same salary is $360 from you and $600 from the employee. Note that the employee-side step-up is steeper than yours — a Year-1-to-Year-2 transition cuts the employee's take-home by $400 a month on a $4,000 salary, and it lands automatically at the month boundary. Tell the employee before the payslip does.

The full Year 1 and Year 2 tables across all age bands, the Full/Graduated variant, and the timing rules are in the CPF for new PRs guide.

Age changes the rate

When an employee crosses an age threshold — 55, 60, 65, 70 — the new rate applies from the first day of the month after their birthday month. An employee who turns 55 on 15 March contributes at below-55 rates for all of March and at the 55–60 rates from 1 April.

The switch is automatic and uneven: at the 55 boundary the total drops from 37% to 34%, so the employee's take-home rises by 2% of wages while your cost falls by 1%. Neither side applies for anything — but your payroll does need to compute the band from the date of birth every single month. This is a field your payroll system should derive, never a manual override.

Which payments attract CPF

CPF is payable on wages — and wages reach further than basic salary:

Attracts CPF	No CPF
Basic salary	Genuine expense reimbursements
Fixed and variable allowances	Termination compensation (in lieu of notice)
Commission and incentive payments	Benefits-in-kind
Overtime pay	Director's fees voted at AGM
Bonus and AWS (as Additional Wages)	Dividends
Encashed annual leave

The recurring judgment call is allowance versus reimbursement. A flat $200 "transport allowance" every month is wages and attracts CPF; a $73.50 claim against a Grab receipt is a reimbursement and does not. The test is whether the money compensates a real expense incurred for work or simply tops up pay — the label on the payslip line does not decide it, the substance does. If you pay the same round number every month with no receipts behind it, treat it as wages and contribute on it.

A pro-rated month attracts CPF on the pro-rated amount — there is no separate CPF proration; the contribution follows whatever wages you actually paid. Hire someone on the 17th and their first, smaller payslip simply carries proportionally smaller CPF. The same logic covers no-pay leave: less wages paid, less CPF, automatically.

How and when to pay

CPF runs on a tight monthly cycle:

Step	What happens
1. Get a CSN	One-time: CPF Submission Number via Corppass — needed before anything moves
2. Compute	Each employee's contribution at their age/PR-year rate, OW capped at $8,000
3. Submit	CPF EZPay by the 14th of the following month
4. Deduct	Recover the employee's share from that month's salary — not later

EZPay takes either direct entry (typing each employee in — workable at 2 staff, painful at 8) or a file upload in the Board's electronic format, which is what payroll software generates. The file route has a second advantage beyond speed: the amounts submitted are the amounts computed, with no transcription step in between. Most CPF discrepancies at small firms are not calculation errors — they are a correct spreadsheet typed incorrectly into a portal at 11pm on the 13th.

Whichever route you take, the submission covers all employees for the month in one pass, and the Board's confirmation is your compliance record — file it with the payroll run it belongs to.

May's contributions are due by 14 June. The deadline is the 14th of the following month, every month — set the recurring reminder for the 10th and keep the buffer.

One discipline matters more than the rest: deduct the employee's share in the same month's payslip. Recovering a missed deduction from a later salary is restricted, so a forgotten deduction usually becomes the employer's cost. The walkthrough — Corppass setup, EZPay formats, first-run gotchas — is the first CPF submission guide.

If you pay late

Miss the 14th and late-payment interest accrues at 1.5% per month, with composition fines on top for repeat lateness. The CPF Board's enforcement is largely automated — arrears notices generate themselves, and persistent default escalates. There is no grace period to negotiate with.

The interest is the small part. Late CPF is also visible to employees, who can check their accounts and file complaints, and a pattern of late contributions invites a broader employment-practices audit. For a micro-SME the cheapest compliance strategy is structural: submit on the same day you run payroll, and the deadline stops existing as a separate thing to remember.

What rides along: SDL and SHG

Your monthly EZPay submission carries two passengers that are not CPF but are collected with it:

Skills Development Levy — an employer-only levy of 0.25% of monthly wages, minimum $2, capped at $11.25 per employee. It applies to every employee, including the foreigners who get no CPF. Across a 6-person team it is under $70 a month — small enough to ignore, mandatory enough that you can't.

Self-Help Group contributions — employee-side donations to CDAC, MBMF, SINDA or ECF, deducted by community and salary band (between $0.50 and $30 a month) and remitted through the same submission. They are opt-out, not opt-in: deduct by default, stop only when the employee files the fund's opt-out form.

Neither changes your CPF math; both change your EZPay total. Budget headcount cost as salary + employer CPF + SDL, with SHG as a pass-through deduction that costs you administration, not money.

What CPF is not: FWL and IR8A

Two neighbours get confused with CPF often enough to flag:

The Foreign Worker Levy is the substitute for CPF on Work Permit and S Pass holders — a monthly employer levy that varies by sector, skill level and dependency ratio. An employee gets CPF or attracts FWL, never both. The budgeting consequence cuts both ways: a work-pass hire saves you 17% employer CPF but adds a levy that can exceed it, depending on sector and quota position.

IR8A income reporting is the IRAS side of the same payroll data: every employer reports each employee's annual income by 1 March, and from 5 employees the Auto-Inclusion Scheme is mandatory. Your CPF figures feed it — employee CPF contributions appear on the IR8A — but it is a tax filing, not a CPF one.

CPF Board, MOM and IRAS run on the same underlying payroll facts. Keep one accurate payroll record and all three filings fall out of it; keep three spreadsheets and they will disagree by year end — usually in February, when the IR8A deadline meets the CPF year-end figures.

Your first payroll month, in order

For a first-time employer the sequence matters more than the theory. The working order:

1. Before the hire starts — apply for your CSN via Corppass, and confirm the employee's status (Citizen, PR with grant date, or work-pass holder) from their documents, not the CV.
2. At the offer — budget the full stack: salary + employer CPF at their age/PR band + SDL. For a PR, budget the Year-3 rate even if Year 1 applies now; the step-up arrives whether or not you planned it.
3. First payrun — compute CPF on actual wages paid (pro-rated if they joined mid-month), deduct the employee share, and show it on the itemised payslip.
4. By the 14th of the next month — submit and pay through EZPay. SDL and any SHG deductions ride in the same submission.
5. Every January — re-check the rate table against the CPF Board's announcement before the first payrun of the year.

A 6-step first-submission walkthrough covers the Corppass and EZPay screens in detail.

Keeping the records straight

CPF runs on the same employment records as the rest of payroll: keep payslips and salary records 2 years for current employees and 1 year after someone leaves. The CPF Board's audit trail is the EZPay history; yours should reconcile to it month by month.

The reconciliation habit pays off twice a year: in January, when the new rate table lands, and in February, when IR8A reporting wants the year's CPF figures per employee. If payroll, EZPay and IR8A come from one system, those are non-events; if they come from three spreadsheets, February is when the differences surface.

Common employer mistakes

• Late first submission — the CSN application sits in a drawer until the 14th has passed. Apply for the CSN the week you hire.
• Full rates for a new PR — over-deducting a Year-1 PR's salary at 20% is the fastest way to a payroll dispute. Check the grant date.
• Missing the age-band switch — the rate changes the month after the birthday month, not on the birthday.
• Bonus above the AW ceiling contributed anyway — compute the cap before December, not after.
• OW/AW mis-tagging — bonus tagged as ordinary wages over-deducts; salary tagged as AW under-contributes.
• CPF on a contractor — no contract of service, no CPF; their MediSave is their own.
• Forgetting SDL on foreign staff — no CPF does not mean no SDL.
• Allowance dressed as reimbursement — a flat monthly "claim" with no receipts is wages, and the Board treats it as such.

Where to go next

Start with the current rates, price a real employee on the calculator, then walk the first submission before your first payroll month closes. Hiring a PR? Read the graduated-rate guide before the offer letter goes out — the CPF difference changes the cost of the hire by several hundred dollars a month.

This page is general information, not financial advice; the statutory figures above are maintained against the CPF Board's published tables and reviewed when rates change.