GHS and social insurance: what comes off besides tax

01GHS — the rates sit in an official table

Contributions are charged on at most €180,000 of annual income per individual. Income from rent, interest and dividends also carries GHS, at the employee rate.

Be careful with calculators online: for the self-employed they often quote the state share instead of the individual’s own. That is one row further down the same table — and a seventh too much.

02Social insurance — and why our figure carries a gap

We cannot evidence these three rates officially. The English page of the Social Insurance Services still shows the 2020 rates — they have been higher since January 2024. We quote the higher ones because they apply; the source is an advisory publication, not the Official Gazette.

And the schedule keeps rising, under a plan written into the law. On the next steps the sources we found disagree with each other — so they are not stated here.

03Two caps, and they are not the same one

GHS and social insurance have separate ceilings, and the social insurance one is the lower — it is reset every year.

The social insurance figures apply from 5 January 2026. If you need an annual ceiling, derive it from the weekly or monthly one rather than from a number found online: two different annual figures sit side by side out there, and neither carries a date.

04The trap for the self-employed: profit is not the base

A self-employed person’s contribution base is not their actual income. It comes from an official table by occupation — the deemed income.

A calculator that applies the self-employed rate to the profit gives the wrong figure for most occupations. Too high or too low, depending on what the table says for that trade.

On 5 January 2026 those values were raised by 3.38%. That is the kind of change nobody notices: no rate moved, only the base.

For directors of a limited company several advisory sources also quote a minimum contribution base. We found no official source for it — so no figure is given here.

05What only the employer pays

Besides social insurance, the employer alone carries 3 further funds: for redundancy, for human resource development, and for social cohesion.

For a one-person company this only matters if the director has a formal contract of employment. Without one they count as self-employed — and then there is no employer side.

06Why this page says “not officially evidenced” so often

Because it is true. The rates and ceilings in this area change on a schedule, the caps annually, and the official English page lags by years.

Every figure on this page carries its source below and the day we saw it there. Where the source is not an official one, it says so. Before you act on it, ask your accountant.