How to Make Your First CPF Submission (Singapore Employers)

The first time you pay CPF: get a CPF Submission Number (CSN) through Corppass, work out each Singapore Citizen and Permanent Resident's employer and employee share by age, then submit and pay through CPF EZPay by the 14th of the month after the wages were earned. Without a CSN, nothing else moves.

Last reviewed 4 June 2026 · Source: CPF Board.

Before you start: what you need

CPF submission is a few clicks once it is set up, but the setup is what trips first-timers. Get these four things in place before payroll day — chasing any one of them mid-submission is exactly what makes a first run miss the deadline.

What you need	Why it matters
UEN (from ACRA)	Your CSN is built from your UEN; no UEN, no CSN
Corppass account + admin role	You log in to CPF EZPay through Corppass, never a personal SingPass
CPF Submission Number (CSN)	The account every contribution is filed against
Each employee's date of birth + residency	Drives the age band and whether CPF applies at all

None of these can be sorted on the morning of payroll. Two of them — the CSN and the Corppass e-service — have approval lag measured in days, not minutes.

Step 1: Get your CPF Submission Number (CSN)

Your CSN is your UEN plus a CPF Payment Code; for a business trading under your own name it is your NRIC or FIN plus the code (CPF Board). It is the single reference every contribution you ever make is filed against, and you cannot submit a dollar of CPF without one.

There are two ways to apply. Immediately after ACRA issues your UEN, you can apply for the CSN at the BizFile+ portal in the same sitting. Otherwise, go to cpf.gov.sg/employer, choose "Making CPF contributions", and open "Applying for a CPF Submission Number" (CPF Board).

Once your application is approved, you can submit your first contribution from the next calendar day. So apply the week you hire, not the week wages are due.

Step 2: Set up Corppass for CPF EZPay

CPF EZPay is the portal you submit through, and for a UEN-registered company it needs a one-time Corppass setup before anyone can log in. In the Corppass portal, assign the "CPF Services for Employers and Business Partners" e-service to whoever will run payroll (CPF Board). Miss this and the EZPay login simply refuses them, however valid the CSN.

Do this once, well ahead of your first payroll date. Corppass role approvals are not instant, and a payroll admin locked out on the 13th is how a first submission slips past the 14th.

Step 3: Know who you actually pay CPF for

CPF is for Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents earning more than $50 a month — full-time, part-time, temporary, or on probation (CPF Board). If there is an employment relationship and the person is a Citizen or PR, CPF applies; the job title and hours do not change that.

Foreign employees are the clean exception. Work Permit, S Pass and Employment Pass holders are outside CPF entirely. For them you owe the Skills Development Levy and, for work-pass holders, the Foreign Worker Levy instead — never a CPF contribution.

A new Permanent Resident is the trap. They do not jump to full rates — for the first two years they pay lower graduated rates, set out in CPF for new Permanent Residents. Switching CPF off for a first-year PR because "they just got PR" is wrong; they still contribute, just less.

Part-timers are not exempt either. A Citizen or PR earning over $50 a month attracts CPF whether they work two days a week or five (CPF Board). If a part-timer also works for another employer, each employer pays CPF on the wages it pays — you contribute on your portion only, and you are not responsible for coordinating their total. The relief sits at the very bottom of the wage scale: no CPF below $50 a month, and reduced rates between $50 and $750, as published by the CPF Board.

Step 4: Work out each contribution

CPF is an employer share added on top of the wage plus an employee share deducted from it. Both are a percentage of wages fixed by the employee's age band, and the rates step down as people get older — the current figures live in our CPF contribution rates guide, read straight from statutory data so they never go stale in this guide.

Two ceilings cap the calculation. CPF is charged only up to a monthly Ordinary Wage ceiling on salary, and an annual Additional Wage ceiling on bonuses and other one-off pay; both current limits sit in that same live guide. Salary or bonus above a ceiling attracts no CPF at all.

Then you round, and the order matters:

Step	Rule
1. Total contribution	Compute (employer % + employee %) of the month's wages
2. Round the total	To the nearest dollar — 50 cents and above rounds up
3. Employee share	Round the employee's own portion down to the nearest dollar
4. Employer share	Whatever is left: the rounded total minus the employee share

Get an employee's date of birth wrong and the age band is wrong, which makes the entire month's CPF wrong for that person. It is the single most common first-timer error, and it compounds quietly every month until someone reconciles.

Do you pay CPF on the bonus too?

Yes. CPF splits pay into Ordinary Wages — the monthly salary — and Additional Wages — bonuses, commissions and other one-off payments, and both attract CPF under their own ceilings. The monthly Ordinary Wage ceiling caps the salary that counts each month; the annual Additional Wage ceiling caps CPF-liable bonuses across the year, reduced by the Ordinary Wages already subject to CPF (CPF Board).

The practical effect is that the more an employee earns in regular salary, the less of their year-end bonus is still CPF-liable. Both ceiling figures are in the live CPF contribution rates guide. Check an employee's remaining Additional Wage room before you run a large bonus — over-contributing is as much a reconciliation problem as under-contributing.

Step 5: Submit and pay through CPF EZPay

Log in to CPF EZPay through Corppass, enter each employee's wages for the month, and the system computes the CPF, SDL and self-help group contributions for you. Review the figures, submit, then pay (CPF Board).

You have three payment routes. GIRO is set up once and then deducts automatically on a fixed date each month — the lowest-effort option, and the one to arrange before your first run. PayNow QR and eNETS are immediate, manual payments if you have not set up GIRO yet (CPF Board).

Payment method	How it works	Best for
GIRO	Auto-deducted on a fixed date monthly	The standing default — set up once
PayNow QR	Scan and pay per submission	Before GIRO is approved
eNETS	Pay per submission from a bank account	One-off or backup

The deadline, and what late payment costs

The deadline is firm: contributions fall due at the end of the wage month and must reach the CPF Board by the 14th of the following month. January wages are due by 14 February; if the 14th is a weekend or public holiday, pay by the next working day.

Miss it and the Board charges late-payment interest at 1.5% a month (a minimum of $5), backdated to the first day late, and can pursue enforcement and composition fines (CPF Board). For a habitual late payer the interest is the small part — enforcement is the part that costs a director time.

The 14th is a hard date to build your payroll calendar around, not a soft target.

What rides along in the same submission

You do not file CPF, the Skills Development Levy and the self-help group funds separately. CPF EZPay collects all of them in one submission, against the same CSN, by the same 14th deadline.

Item	Who it covers	More detail
CPF	Citizens and PRs earning over $50/month	CPF rates
SDL	Every employee, including foreigners	What is SDL
SHG funds	By employee's community — CDAC, MBMF, SINDA or ECF	SHG contributions

Take one Singapore Citizen earning $3,000 a month. On top of the CPF for their age band, that month's submission also carries SDL of $7.50 (0.25% × $3,000) and, if they elect CDAC, a $1.00 community-fund deduction for that wage band (CPF Board; SSG). All three leave in the same payment. So your real monthly remittance is CPF plus SDL plus any SHG — budget for the whole figure, not just the CPF line.

Paying CPF for yourself as a director

If you draw a salary from your own company under a service contract, that salary is wages and attracts CPF exactly like any other employee's — you submit your own CPF alongside the team's (CPF Board). Director's fees voted at a general meeting are not wages and carry no CPF.

The distinction matters for a one-person company that pays its founder a salary: you are an employer and an employee at once, and your own CPF is due by the same 14th. Because that salary is also employment income, it flows into your own year-end IR8A — so getting the wage-versus-fee split right keeps both your CPF and your tax reporting correct.

Keep records, and how to fix a mistake

Keep your CPF records — submission details and payment confirmations — for inspection; the CPF Board can audit contributions, and clean records are your defence. Reconcile each submission against the itemised payslips you must already give staff under the Employment Act (Section 96, MOM) — the CPF shown on the payslip and the CPF in EZPay should match to the dollar. Your employees see each contribution land in their own CPF account statement too, so an error is visible to them, not only to you.

If you over- or under-paid, do not patch it silently in the next month. CPF EZPay has a path to adjust a past submission or apply for a refund of excess contributions; use it so each month still reconciles to what was actually owed (CPF Board).

A wrong contribution corrected through the proper channel is a non-event. The same error left to roll forward becomes a reconciliation problem that surfaces, usually, during an audit.

First-timer mistakes to avoid

Three errors cause most first-run problems. First, leaving the CSN or Corppass setup to payroll week — both carry approval lag, so start them when you hire. Second, treating the employer share as part of the salary you quoted rather than a cost on top of it. Third, switching CPF off for a first-year PR who in fact still contributes at the graduated rate.

Before your first run, confirm CPF is switched on for every Citizen and PR, that each date of birth and PR status is correct, and that your GIRO or PayNow is ready. Get those right and your first submission reconciles cleanly — and every month after is the same few clicks by the 14th.