Costa Rica Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN COSTA RICA. 1. THE RATES CHANGED ON 1 JANUARY 2026 AND WILL CHANGE AGAIN ON 1 JANUARY 2029. Employee total moved from 10,67 % to 10,83 % and employer total from 26,67 % to 26,83 %, both driven by the IVM step: worker 4,17 % to 4,33 %, employer 5,42 % to 5,58 %, State 1,57 % to 1,75 %. The current rates run to 31 December 2028 and a further programmed increase takes the tripartite IVM total to 12,16 % from 1 January 2029. 2. THE INCREASES COME FROM A CCSS BOARD RESOLUTION, NOT FROM A STATUTE. Transitorio XI del Reglamento del Seguro de IVM, approved by the Junta Directiva in Sesión N° 9038 de 2019, programmed the whole staircase. There is no Ley to monitor — an engine watching the Asamblea Legislativa will never see these changes coming. Watch the Reglamento and the Junta Directiva. 3. COSTA RICA HAS THE HEAVIEST EMPLOYER LOAD IN THIS RECORD AND THERE IS NO CEILING ON ANY OF IT. 26,83 % of payroll on the CCSS planilla, plus the INS póliza on top, running on the whole salary however large. Neighbours with topes (Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Argentina's employee side) do not generalise here. 4. ONLY TWO OF THE SEVEN PLANILLA LINES ARE ACTUALLY SOCIAL INSURANCE. SEM and IVM are; the Banco Popular contributions, FODESAF, IMAS, INA and the Ley de Protección al Trabajador contributions are a compulsory savings scheme, two social-assistance levies, a training levy and a second-pillar pension respectively. They are all collected on the same CCSS planilla, which is why they are constantly mistaken for CCSS charges. Their statutes, destinations and exemptions are all different. 5. THE STATE IS A THIRD CONTRIBUTOR AND ITS SHARE IS NOT AN EMPLOYER COST. Art. 73 de la Constitución makes the seguros sociales tripartite: the State pays 0,25 % to SEM and 1,75 % to IVM. Published tripartite totals — 15,00 % for SEM and 11,66 % for IVM — include the State. The payroll figures are 14,75 % and 9,91 %. Adding the State's share to employer cost overstates it by two points. 6. THE INA LEVY HAS A SMALL-EMPLOYER EXEMPTION AND NOTHING ELSE DOES. Non-agricultural employers with fewer than five permanent employees do not pay the 1,50 % INA contribution, giving an employer total of 25,33 % instead of 26,83 %. The test is on PERMANENT headcount and on whether the activity is agricultural — agricultural employers pay it at any size. FODESAF, IMAS and the Banco Popular contributions have no such exemption. 7. THE EMPLOYEE'S 1 % TO THE BANCO POPULAR IS A SAVING, NOT A PREMIUM. It is an ahorro obligatorio credited to the worker and repayable to him, but it is a compulsory payroll deduction all the same and it is the difference between an employee total of 9,83 % and the correct 10,83 %. Engines that model only CCSS branches drop it. 8. THE 4,50 % LEY DE PROTECCIÓN AL TRABAJADOR CONTRIBUTION IS DEFERRED PAY, NOT A LEVY. Both limbs — the Fondo de Capitalización Laboral and the Régimen Obligatorio de Pensiones Complementarias — belong to the worker: the FCL is drawable and the ROP is a funded second-pillar pension. It is nonetheless entirely employer-borne, with no employee contribution to either. 9. THE INS PÓLIZA IS OUTSIDE THE 26,83 %. Occupational-risk cover under Título IV del Código de Trabajo is compulsory, employer-only, graded by activity and billed separately by the Instituto Nacional de Seguros. Any statement that a Costa Rican employer pays 26,83 % is a planilla-only figure. 10. THE EMPLOYEE PAYS NOTHING FOR OCCUPATIONAL RISK, FOR FODESAF, FOR IMAS, FOR INA OR FOR THE SECOND PILLAR. The whole of the employee's 10,83 % is SEM 5,50 + IVM 4,33 + Banco Popular 1,00. Model rate_employee as a hard 0 on the other five branches. Total for an ordinary private-sector employee: employee 10,83 % of salary, uncapped; employer 26,83 % on the CCSS planilla, uncapped, or 25,33 % for a non-agricultural employer with fewer than five permanent employees, PLUS the INS riesgos del trabajo premium for its activity. The State adds a further 2,00 % into the funds which is nobody's payroll cost. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: none. All rates are national and identical in all seven provincias. Costa Rica has no provincial or cantonal payroll levy and no regional social-insurance rate. The only variation is by the EMPLOYER'S HEADCOUNT AND SECTOR (the INA exemption for non-agricultural employers under five permanent workers) and by the EMPLOYER'S ACTIVITY AND CLAIMS RECORD (the INS póliza) — never by geography. Do not model provincial rate dimensions. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: 1. The INS riesgos del trabajo premium — rate_total and rate_employer null. It is an activity-graded insurance tariff set by the Instituto Nacional de Seguros, not a statutory percentage, and there is no published national class table equivalent to Colombia's five classes. 2. THE SPLIT OF THE 4,50 % LEY DE PROTECCIÓN AL TRABAJADOR CONTRIBUTION between the Fondo de Capitalización Laboral and the Régimen Obligatorio de Pensiones Complementarias. The combined figure is served because it is what the employer pays and because it is the only value on which the sources reconcile; the internal split was altered by la Ley N° 9906 and is reported inconsistently by Costa Rican professional sources (1,50/2,00, 2,50/2,00 and 3,00/1,50 all circulate). Serving one of those splits as verified would assert something not established. The combined 4,50 % is not in doubt: every published breakdown reconciles to the 26,83 % employer total only at that figure. 3. The base mínima contributiva. The CCSS fixes a minimum contribution base by Junta Directiva resolution and adjusts it periodically; the rule is served, the current colón amount is not, because it is re-set on the CCSS's own cycle and was not read from a current resolution. 4. Aguinaldo, cesantía, preaviso and vacaciones. Real and mandatory employer costs under the Código de Trabajo, but fixed entitlements rather than percentage contributions to a social-insurance branch. 5. The State's 0,25 % and 1,75 %. Stated so an engine can recognise and strip them out of published tripartite totals, but they are not payroll charges and are not counted in either the employee or the employer figure. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: the next IVM step. Under Transitorio XI del Reglamento del IVM the rates served here run from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2028, and from 1 January 2029 the tripartite IVM contribution rises to 12,16 %. That is programmed, not proposed. RE-VERIFY FROM 2028-10-01, and note that the CCSS Junta Directiva can bring forward or alter the schedule by resolution at any time, since it is a Reglamento and not a Ley. WHAT WILL MOVE, AND WHEN: the IVM rates on 1 January 2029 as above; the base mínima contributiva on the CCSS's own periodic cycle; the INS tariffs on the insurer's cycle. The SEM rates, the Banco Popular contributions, FODESAF, IMAS, INA and the Ley de Protección al Trabajador 4,50 % have no announced change. SOURCING CAVEATS: The 2026 employee total of 10,83 % and employer total of 26,83 %, the IVM step from 4,17 %/5,42 %/1,57 % to 4,33 %/5,58 %/1,75 %, its authority in Transitorio XI del Reglamento del Seguro de IVM approved in Sesión N° 9038 de 2019, its validity to 31 December 2028 and the further 2029 increase to a 12,16 % tripartite total are consistent across Costa Rican national press, several independent legal and payroll practitioners and the CCSS's own news reporting of the change. The line-by-line breakdown — SEM 5,50/9,25, Banco Popular 1,00/0,50, FODESAF 5,00, IMAS 0,50, INA 1,50 with its small-employer exemption — is likewise consistent across those sources. THE ONE PLACE THE SOURCES DIVERGE is the internal split of the Ley de Protección al Trabajador contribution, which is why it is served as a combined 4,50 % rather than as two lines: the combined figure is forced by the arithmetic of the 26,83 % total that every source publishes, while no two sources give the same FCL/ROP division. The percentages were not read from the CCSS's own Reglamento texts, which are Junta Directiva instruments rather than gazetted statutes; the statutes named for the Banco Popular, FODESAF, IMAS, INA and the Ley de Protección al Trabajador are the correct authorising Laws but their articles were not opened. 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/cr/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://latamref.dev/v1/cr/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://latamref.dev/provenance/cr/social-contributions

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The same figure elsewhere: Dominican Republic · Ecuador · El Salvador · Guatemala · Guyana · all 22