Employer contribution rates and calculator

Employer contributions

As an employer, you pay primary and secondary contributions. The primary contribution is a deduction from your employees salary, the secondary contribution is paid by you.

2024 contributions rates

Minimum earnings threshold

No contributions are paid if the employee's earnings are below the Minimum Earnings Threshold.

Payment period	Threshold
Paid weekly	£128
Paid every 2 weeks	£256
Paid every 4 weeks	£512
Paid monthly	£553

Class 1 contributions

If the earnings are at or above the minimum earnings threshold you pay primary and secondary contributions on the whole earnings up to the standard earnings limit.

Employers must pay a 2.5% secondary contributions on their employees' earnings between the Standard Earnings Limit (SEL) and the Upper Earnings Limit (UEL).

Class 1 contribution	Percentage
Primary	6% up to the SEL
Secondary	6.5% up to the SEL
Secondary	2.5% between the SEL and UEL

Earnings Limit	Monthly earnings
Standard Earnings Limit (SEL)	£5,800
Upper Earnings Limit (UEL)	£26,442

Paying contributions and deadlines

Class 1 contributions must be paid no later than 15 days after the end of each month. For example, contributions for July must be paid by 15 August.

Employers can find more details on submitting and paying your employees' contributions.

What to include as earnings

For further information on what should be incorporated in the gross wage see our schedule guide.

Items not to include in an employees gross wages
Items to include in an employees gross wages

Contributions calculator

The calculator can:

calculate the amount of primary (employee) contribution that you may deduct from an employee’s gross earnings
calculate your secondary (employer) contribution, including any additional payment for employees whose gross earnings are between the monthly Standard Earnings Limit and the monthly Upper Earnings Limit
recognise when earnings fall below the minimum earnings threshold

Monthly paid employees

Enter the gross monthly earnings figure, but do not include pence. For example you would enter £2100.89 as £2100.

Weekly paid employees

Enter the gross weekly earnings figure (including pence). The calculator is set up to always round down to the nearest 25 pence (for example, £567.49 will round to £567.25).

As the weeks progress, you must enter the weekly earnings into each week so that the calculator can take into account the accumulative totals for that month.

Please note, in the final week’s payment in any one month, you must round down so that the monthly accumulative total does not include pence. The total of all the weekly earnings paid in any one month, rounded down to the nearest whole pound, must be entered on the combined employer return.

Important

The results cannot be used to override or dispute any officially issued notice. They are for guidance purposes only.