Belize Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN BELIZE. 1. THIS IS A CONTRIBUTION TABLE, NOT A RATE. Belize does not charge a percentage of pay. Actual weekly earnings select a band; the band carries a fixed insurable-earnings figure and two fixed cash amounts. Multiplying gross pay by any percentage gives the wrong answer except at the exact band boundaries. This is the defining feature of the Belizean scheme and the reason a generic percentage-based payroll engine cannot be pointed at Belize without a lookup table. 2. THE BAND FIGURE CAN EXCEED ACTUAL PAY. Someone earning $145 a week is assessed on $160. There is no proration and no refund. The published "rate" columns describe the split of the contribution across the two payers, not the burden on real earnings, so the effective cost as a percentage of actual pay varies continuously within each band and is at its highest at the bottom of a band. 3. THE EMPLOYEE/EMPLOYER SPLIT MOVES WITH EARNINGS. It runs from 1.88%/8.13% at the bottom to 4.50%/5.50% at the top. There is NO single Belizean employee rate and NO single employer rate — this is why both fields are null. Sources that quote "4.5% employee, 5.5% employer" are quoting only the top band, which applies to everyone earning $500 a week or more but to nobody below it. 4. THE COMBINED RATE IS 10% AND HAS BEEN SINCE JANUARY 2021. It was 8% until 30 June 2019, 8.5% from 1 July 2019, 9% from January 2020 and 10% from January 2021, under SI 41 of 2019 and SI 184 of 2020. The maximum weekly insurable earnings followed the same phased path: $320, then $440 (1 July 2019), $480 (January 2020) and $520 (January 2021). The phase-in is COMPLETE — there is no further scheduled step. Sources still quoting an $320, $440 or $480 ceiling, or an 8%/8.5%/9% rate, are describing a phase that ended more than five years ago; a $500 ceiling is a misreading of the top band's lower bound ($500.00 and over), which is an EARNINGS trigger, not the insurable figure ($520). 5. THE CEILING IS WEEKLY, AND THE CONTRIBUTION IS COMPUTED PER CONTRIBUTION WEEK. The contribution week runs Monday to Sunday. Monthly-paid employees are not assessed on a monthly ceiling; their pay is attributed to contribution weeks and the table applied to each. There is no published monthly or annual ceiling to convert to, and a year does not always contain exactly 52 contribution weeks, so an annualised cap of 52 x $520 is an approximation and not a statutory figure. 6. CONTRIBUTIONS START AT 14, NOT AT 18. The Board states contributions are payable for employees "between ages fourteen (14) years to sixty-five (65)". Student and holiday workers in that age range are insurable. 7. THE OVER-65 AND BENEFIT-RECEIVING 60-TO-64 CATEGORIES DO NOT FALL OUT OF THE SYSTEM. They move to a flat $2.60 per week paid entirely by the employer, covering Employment Injury Benefit only. Dropping the employer charge entirely is a common and detectable under-payment. 8. ONE CONTRIBUTION, ALL BRANCHES. The 10% funds the whole benefit set the Board lists on the schedule — death, funeral grant, injury, medical care, sickness, disability, invalidity, maternity, retirement and survivors' — out of a single fund. There is no branch-by-branch percentage allocation to model, and no separate employer occupational-injury assessment: injury cover is inside the same contribution (which is why the reduced category, which buys injury cover alone, still costs something). 9. THE SCHEDULE ALSO CARRIES THE BENEFIT MAXIMA, AND THEY MOVED WHEN THE CONTRIBUTIONS DID NOT. The April 2022 revision of the schedule raised the maximum short-term benefit to $416 a week and the maximum pension to $312 a week / $16,224 a year, while leaving the contribution columns as set in January 2021. When re-verifying, check the contribution columns specifically — a newly dated schedule does not imply a contribution change. 10. REMITTANCE IS MONTHLY EVEN THOUGH THE CHARGE IS WEEKLY. The employer pays both shares to the Board within fourteen days after the end of the month. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: none. The table applies uniformly across all six districts. There is no district, municipal or free-zone variation, and no industry differentiation — Belize has no risk-rated employer assessment. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: I put no number on the following, deliberately. A SINGLE NATIONAL EMPLOYEE OR EMPLOYER PERCENTAGE — both are null on the main branch. There genuinely is not one; the split is banded. The full band table is served in the base field so nothing is lost. THE VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTOR RATE — the Board operates a separate voluntary contributor scheme with its own rate and its own restricted benefit set. Out of scope for an employed person and not priced here. SELF-EMPLOYED CONTRIBUTIONS — not modelled. There is no employer share and the assessment basis differs. SOURCING CAVEATS, STATED PLAINLY: the contribution table, the categories and the effective date are read directly off the administering authority's own published Contribution & Benefit Schedule. The statutory instrument numbers (SI 41 of 2019, SI 184 of 2020) come from the Board's own published list of statutory instruments; the instruments themselves were not opened, so the phased rate and ceiling steps attributed to them are taken from the Board's schedule and contemporaneous reporting rather than from the operative regulation text. Whether any instrument later than SI 184 of 2020 has amended the contribution schedule is confirmed only negatively — the Board's own statutory-instrument list shows nothing later touching collection of contributions, and the schedule it currently publishes is the April 2022 one. TAX TREATMENT: whether the employee's contribution is deductible for Belize income tax is deliberately not asserted — it was not verified against the Income and Business Tax Act.

Get it programmatically

curl https://latamref.dev/v1/bz/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://latamref.dev/v1/bz/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://latamref.dev/provenance/bz/social-contributions

Other Belize series: Policy interest rate · General Sales Tax (GST) standard rate · VAT registration threshold · National minimum wage (hourly) · Public and bank holidays · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Statutory interest on judgment debts · Personal income tax

The same figure elsewhere: Bolivia · Brazil · Chile · Colombia · Costa Rica · all 22