Earning & Workincome · tax
China Social Insurance & Housing Fund Calculator (五险一金)
China
五险一金 is not a percentage of this month’s pay, which is the assumption almost every calculator makes. Contributions are charged on a contribution base — your average monthly wage across the previous year — and that base is clamped between a floor of roughly 60% of the local average wage and a ceiling of 300% of it. The clamp is the whole story: it is why a high earner’s deduction stops growing past a certain salary, and why someone on a low wage pays a larger share of their pay than the headline rate suggests. Both numbers come out here — what leaves the payslip, and what the employer adds on top. Rates and both limits are set city by city and reset every July, so they are yours to enter; the defaults are Beijing 2025, for illustration.
Basis: Rates/bases are city- and year-specific (reset each July) — defaults ≈ Beijing 2025; verify your city
The numbers
- Employee 五险一金 deduction
- 6,750
- social 3,150 + fund 3,600
- Take-home before tax
- 23,250
- before individual income tax
- Total cost to employer
- 41,610
- gross + 11,610 contributions
- Contribution base used
- 30,000
- equals gross (within floor/ceiling)
The operator’s read
Worth knowing
For every 30,000 of salary, the employer pays about 11,610 more on top — roughly 39% — the part that never appears on a payslip. A hire’s true cost is 41,610, not 30,000.
Worth knowing
Of every 100 of gross, 78 reaches you before income tax; 23 goes to your own 五险一金. This uses the floor and ceiling from Beijing 北京 (2025); the rates above are national-typical defaults (pension 8%/16% is fixed, medical/unemployment vary by city). Bases reset each July — verify yours.
Methodology
Contributions are charged on the contribution base = the prior-year average monthly wage, clamped to a city floor (~60% of local average wage) and ceiling (300%). Salary above the ceiling is not charged; below the floor, the floor is used. General calculators skip this clamp and apply rates to gross — the most common China-payroll error.
Employee deduction = base × (employee social rate + housing fund rate). Employer cost added on top = base × (employer social rate + housing fund rate). Pension is 16% employer / 8% employee nationwide; medical, unemployment, work-injury, and the housing-fund percentage are city-set. Work-injury and maternity are employer-only.
Rates, floors, and ceilings are city- and year-specific and reset each July (medical sometimes on the calendar year); some cities differ by hukou (e.g. Shenzhen adds ~1% employer pension for local hukou) and use different bases per insurance (Guangzhou). This tool takes them as inputs so the number is always current — enter your city’s published figures rather than trusting an embedded table.
Questions
- How is China social insurance calculated — on gross salary?
- No — on the contribution base, which is your prior-year average wage clamped between a city floor (~60% of local average wage) and ceiling (300% of it). Salary above the ceiling is not charged, and below the floor the floor applies. Then each insurance rate is applied to that base. Applying rates to raw gross is the usual mistake.
- How much does an employee really cost an employer in China?
- Gross salary plus the employer’s social insurance (pension 16%, medical ~9%, unemployment ~0.5%, work-injury ~0.2–1.9%) and matched housing fund (5–12%) — often 27–40% on top of gross, all charged on the clamped contribution base. Enter your city’s rates above for the exact figure.
- What is 五险一金?
- The five insurances (pension, medical, unemployment, work-injury, maternity) plus one fund (the housing provident fund). Employees pay pension, medical, unemployment, and the fund; employers pay all of those plus work-injury and maternity. Rates and contribution bases are set city by city and change each year.
For agents
Call this tool instead of computing in-context. Deterministic JSON in, computed values plus the benchmark read out. Full agent docs →
curl -s https://xearno.tools/api/v1/tools/china-social-insurance \
-H 'content-type: application/json' \
-d '{"gross":30000,"city":"beijing","baseFloor":0,"baseCeiling":0,"employeeSocialRate":10.5,"employerSocialRate":26.7,"housingFundRate":12}'Schema: GET /api/v1/tools/china-social-insurance · MCP tool name: china_social_insurance
Related tools
- China Salary Tax & Net Pay (cumulative withholding 累计预扣) — Your real China take-home month by month — under the cumulative method, where the same salary is taxed more each month as the year goes on.
- UK Redundancy Package Calculator — what you actually take home — Redundancy pay, notice and untaken holiday together — and which parts of it the £30,000 exemption does not cover.
- UK Notice Pay Calculator — How many weeks’ notice you’re owed, what it pays, and how much of it is taxed.
- Hong Kong (HK) Salaries Tax Calculator 2026/27 — What your Hong Kong salary actually costs you in tax this year, after allowances — and whether the standard rate caps the bill.
Embed this calculator
Free to use on your own site. It keeps working as the rules change, because we maintain the data — no ads, no cookies, and a link back to the full tool.
<iframe src="https://xearno.tools/embed/china-social-insurance" width="100%" height="980" style="border:1px solid #23262e;border-radius:12px;max-width:640px" loading="lazy" title="China Social Insurance & Housing Fund Calculator (五险一金) — Xearno Tools"></iframe>