Colombia Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN COLOMBIA. 1. THE ART. 114-1 EXONERACIÓN DECIDES MOST OF THE EMPLOYER COST, AND IT IS TESTED PER WORKER PER MONTH. Art. 114-1 del Estatuto Tributario, added by el art. 65 de la Ley 1819 de 2016, exonerates income-tax-contributing legal persons — and natural persons employing two or more workers — from THREE charges in respect of each worker earning LESS THAN 10 SMMLV: the SENA 2 %, the ICBF 3 % and the employer's 8,5 % health contribution. It does NOT touch the 4 % Caja de Compensación Familiar, the 12 % pension contribution, the ARL contribution or any employee deduction. For an ordinary employee below COP 17.509.050/month in 2026 the employer therefore pays 12 % pension + 4 % Caja + ARL, not the 29,5 % + ARL that the raw statutory rates imply. The test is per employee: in one company, staff below the threshold attract nothing and staff at or above it attract the full 13,5 points. 2. EVERY THRESHOLD AND BOTH LIMITS ARE DENOMINATED IN MINIMUM WAGES, SO THEY ALL MOVE EVERY 1 JANUARY. With SMMLV 2026 at COP 1.750.905: floor 1 SMMLV = 1.750.905; Fondo de Solidaridad Pensional threshold 4 SMMLV = 7.003.620; art. 114-1 exoneración limit 10 SMMLV = 17.509.050; solidarity surcharge bracket floor 16 SMMLV = 28.014.480; ceiling 25 SMMLV = 43.772.625. The 2026 minimum wage rose about 23 % over 2025's COP 1.423.500, so every one of those peso figures jumped by the same proportion. NEVER cache a Colombian peso threshold; store the SMMLV multiple and the current SMMLV. Note also that the 2026 SMMLV had an unusual history: Decretos 1469 y 1470 de 2025 of 29 December 2025 were suspended and the same figures were reissued by Decreto 0159 of 19 February 2026 with the required technical justification — the amounts never changed and applied from 1 January 2026 throughout. 3. THE AUXILIO DE TRANSPORTE IS NOT PART OF THE CONTRIBUTION BASE. COP 249.095/month in 2026, payable to workers earning up to two minimum wages, and excluded from the IBC for every branch — but INCLUDED in the base for prestaciones sociales such as cesantías and prima. An engine that computes one "salary" figure and reuses it for both is wrong on one of them. 4. THE 40 % RULE ON NON-SALARY PAYMENTS. Art. 30 de la Ley 1393 de 2010 caps payments agreed between the parties as not constituting salary at 40 % of total remuneration for IBC purposes; anything above that falls back into the base. Engines that exclude bonuses because a contract says they are non-salarial, without testing the 40 % limit, under-declare. 5. SALARIO INTEGRAL IS 70 %. Where the worker is on a salario integral, the IBC is 70 % of that salary, not 100 %. 6. THE FONDO DE SOLIDARIDAD PENSIONAL IS A CLIFF, NOT A TAPER. At an IBC of 4 SMMLV or more the additional 1 % is charged on the WHOLE base, not on the excess. The further progressive surcharge above 16 SMMLV works the same way and takes the top employee solidarity rate to 2 %. A worker who crosses 4 SMMLV mid-year starts paying 1 % of everything, which is why net pay can fall on a pay rise. 7. THE PENSION SPLIT IS 75/25 OF A SINGLE RATE. Art. 20 de la Ley 100, sustituido por el art. 7 de la Ley 797 de 2003, states one 16 % rate and allocates three quarters to the employer and one quarter to the worker. The 12 % and 4 % figures are consequences, not separately stated rates, and they move together if the 16 % ever moves. 8. THE ARL RATE SPANS TWENTY-FIVE-FOLD. 0,348 % to 8,700 % across five classes under art. 13 del Decreto 1772 de 1994, assigned by economic activity under Decreto 1607 de 2002 and then moved within the class band by the employer's own accident record. A new employer enters at the VALOR INICIAL of its class — 0,522 % for Clase I, not the 0,348 % minimum. Any single national ARL figure is a fiction. 9. THE PENSION REFORM IS NOT IN FORCE. Ley 2381 de 2024, which would create the Sistema de Protección Social Integral and route contributions on the first tranche of income to a Componente de Prima Media administered by Colpensiones with the excess to the private funds, was to take effect on 1 July 2025. The Corte Constitucional suspended its entry into force over defects in the legislative process and ordered the Cámara de Representantes to repeat part of the procedure; it remains suspended, with the Sala Plena scheduled to take the matter up again in August 2026. The rates and architecture served here are those of the Ley 100 de 1993 regime, which is what is operative. Do not implement Ley 2381. 10. NOTHING IN THE SYSTEM IS DEDUCTED FROM THE WORKER FOR RIESGOS LABORALES OR PARAFISCALES. ARL, Caja, SENA and ICBF are all employer-only. Model rate_employee as a hard 0 on all four. Total for an ordinary private-sector employee earning under 10 SMMLV at an exonerated employer: employee 8 % (4 pension + 4 health), rising to 9 % at or above 4 SMMLV once the solidarity 1 % starts; employer 16 % (12 pension + 4 Caja) plus the ARL rate for its class — about 16,5 % for a Clase I office employer. Where the exoneración does NOT apply, the employer figure is 29,5 % plus ARL. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: none. All rates, both limits, the minimum wage and the auxilio de transporte are national and identical in all 32 departments and the Distrito Capital. Colombia has no departmental or municipal payroll levy and no regional social-insurance rate. The only per-employer variation is by ECONOMIC ACTIVITY and ACCIDENT EXPERIENCE (the ARL class) and by TAX STATUS AND HEADCOUNT (whether art. 114-1 applies); the only per-employee variation is by SALARY LEVEL against the SMMLV thresholds. Do not model departmental rate dimensions. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: 1. A single ARL rate — rate_total and rate_employer null. The complete five-class table with the minimum, initial and maximum for each class is served in that branch's notes, together with the statutory outer limits of 0,348 % and 8,7 %; what is refused is a single figure, because the value depends on the employer's activity code under Decreto 1607 de 2002 and on its own accident record. 2. The individual bracket rates of the Fondo de Solidaridad Pensional surcharge above 16 SMMLV. The structure is served — 0,2-point steps per bracket to a maximum additional 1 %, charged on the whole IBC — and the base 1 % from 4 SMMLV is served as a value; the bracket-by-bracket table was not read from the instrument and is not reproduced. 3. Prestaciones sociales — cesantías (one month's salary per year), intereses sobre cesantías (12 % per annum on the accrued balance), prima de servicios (one month's salary per year) and vacaciones. These are large and mandatory employer costs, but they are Código Sustantivo del Trabajo entitlements calculated on a different base (which INCLUDES the auxilio de transporte for the first three), not percentage contributions to a social-insurance branch, and forcing them into a percent-of-IBC schema would misstate them. 4. The aprendices obligation. Employers above a headcount threshold must engage apprentices or pay a monetisation charge in lieu; it is a separate obligation from the 2 % SENA parafiscal and is not priced here. 5. Rates for independientes and for the régimen subsidiado. An independent worker contributes on 40 % of monthly income and bears both shares; that is outside the scope of an ordinary employee. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: 1. Ley 2381 de 2024 (Sistema de Protección Social Integral). Enacted, but its entry into force is SUSPENDED by the Corte Constitucional pending correction of the legislative procedure, and the Sala Plena listed the matter for August 2026. If it is upheld and revived, the pension branch changes architecture — contributions on income up to a stated multiple of the minimum wage would go to a Componente de Prima Media at Colpensiones and only the excess to the private funds. RE-VERIFY FROM 2026-09-01 and treat any Colombian pension model as provisional until the Court has ruled. 2. The SMMLV and the auxilio de transporte are re-fixed by decree each December for the following 1 January, and every threshold and limit in this record moves with them. RE-VERIFY FROM 2025-12-20 of each year — and note that the 2026 decrees were themselves suspended and reissued in February, so the December decree is not always the last word. No change is on the statute book to the 16 % pension rate, the 12,5 % health rate, the parafiscal rates or the ARL table. SOURCING CAVEATS: The ARL table is read verbatim from art. 13 del Decreto 1772 de 1994 as reproduced by ARL SURA, including the operative limits sentence and the valor-inicial rule for new entrants; all fifteen figures across the five classes are served. The statutory rates and base rules for pensions, health, the solidarity fund and the parafiscales are taken from the articles cited, as consolidated and amended — in particular art. 20 de la Ley 100 as sustituido por el art. 7 de la Ley 797 de 2003, and art. 204 de la Ley 100 as modificado por el art. 10 de la Ley 1122 de 2007 — rather than from a single fetched consolidated text of each Law. The scope and per-worker operation of the art. 114-1 exoneración, including that it excludes the 4 % Caja de Compensación Familiar and never touches the employee's own 4 % health contribution, is confirmed across multiple independent Colombian professional sources reading the same article. The SMMLV of COP 1.750.905 and the auxilio de transporte of COP 249.095 for 2026, the decree numbers and the February 2026 reissue are likewise from multiple independent professional and international law-firm sources rather than from the Diario Oficial itself. The suspension of Ley 2381 de 2024 and the August 2026 listing are reported consistently by the Corte Constitucional's own auto record and by several independent sources. Employee and employer shares are stated separately: the employee figure is what leaves the payslip, the employer figure is cost of employment and is not a deduction.

Get it programmatically

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

Other Colombia series: Banco de la República tasa de intervención · Statutory default interest (interés de mora) · IVA tarifa general · VAT registration threshold · Salario mínimo mensual legal vigente (SMMLV) · Public holidays (festivos) · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Personal income tax brackets · TRM

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