Ecuador Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN ECUADOR. 1. THERE IS NO CEILING. None. Not on any branch, not annually, not monthly. Ecuador is one of the very few countries in this dataset where the full 9,45 %/11,15 % runs on the entire materia gravada however large it is. Every neighbour has a tope (Chile in UF, Colombia at 25 SMMLV, Peru for the AFP commissions, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, Panama's seguro educativo), and template-driven engines routinely import one. Do not cap Ecuador. 2. THERE IS A FLOOR, AND IT IS A FLOOR ON THE BASE, NOT A LIABILITY THRESHOLD. Art. 11 inciso tercero LSS: "Para efecto del aporte, en ningún caso el sueldo básico mensual será inferior al sueldo básico unificado, al sueldo básico sectorial, al establecido en las leyes de defensa profesional o al sueldo básico determinado en la escala de remuneraciones de los servidores públicos, según corresponda, siempre que el afiliado ejerza esa actividad." USD 482,00 from 1 January 2026 (Acuerdo Ministerial MDT-2025-195). Below it, contributions are still due — they are simply computed on 482, not on the lower actual pay. And the SBU is only the national floor: the sueldo básico SECTORIAL fixed by the comisiones sectoriales exceeds it for a large number of occupations and is the operative minimum for those workers. An engine that hard-codes 482 as the floor for everyone under-declares in every occupation with a higher sectoral minimum. 3. THE EMPLOYEE PAYS NOTHING FOR HEALTH, AND THE EMPLOYER PAYS NOTHING FOR THE LOD LEVY. The Ecuadorian split is idiosyncratic branch by branch: pensions 6,64/3,10 (employee-heavy), health 0/5,71 (employer-only), riesgos 0/0,55 (employer-only), LOD 0,10/0 (employee-only), cesantía 2,00/1,00, campesino 0,35/0,35 (matched), administración 0,36/0,44. Only ONE branch out of seven is matched. Any assumption of symmetry is wrong in six places. 4. THE RIESGOS DEL TRABAJO RATE IN THE STATUTE IS WRONG. Art. 159 LSS says 0,5 %. The rate the IESS actually collects is 0,55 %, set by Consejo Directivo resolution under the art. 15 actuarial power. Take the rate from the IESS tasas-de-aportación table, not from the Act; the Act's figure will not reconcile to the published 11,15 % employer total. 5. FOUR THINGS ARE OUTSIDE MATERIA GRAVADA AND PAYROLL ENGINES PUT THEM IN. Décimo tercer sueldo, décimo cuarto sueldo, participación de utilidades (art. 14 numeral 6 LSS) and the fondo de reserva itself all sit outside the contribution base, as does the Compensación Económica para alcanzar el salario digno (art. 11 in fine and art. 14 numeral 7). The IVM branch description in the IESS table confusingly reads "decimotercera, decimocuarta" — that refers to the thirteenth and fourteenth PENSIONS paid to retirees, not to the employee's décimos, which are not contributory. 6. THE ART. 14 EXEMPTIONS ARE CAPPED AT 20 %. Meal costs, employer-funded medical and dental care, life and personal-accident premiums, work clothing and tools, and habitual social-order benefits are excluded from materia gravada — but "la suma de las exenciones comprendidas en los numerales 1 al 5 de este artículo no podrá superar en ningún caso una cuantía equivalente al veinte por ciento (20%) de la retribución monetaria del trabajador por conceptos que constituyan materia gravada". Any excess above 20 % falls back into the base. Utilities (numeral 6) and the salario-digno compensation (numeral 7) sit outside that 20 % cap. An engine that excludes benefits without testing the 20 % limit under-declares. 7. THE EMPLOYEE'S CONTRIBUTION IS INCOME-TAX DEDUCTIBLE; THE EMPLOYER'S IS NOT A DEDUCTION FROM PAY. Art. 17 de la Ley de Régimen Tributario Interno computes the base imponible of employment income as income subject to tax LESS the aportes personales al IESS, except where the employer pays them. So impuesto a la renta is computed on gross less 9,45 %, not on gross. The employer's 11,15 % is cost of employment and never appears on the payslip as a deduction. 8. FAILURE TO WITHHOLD SHIFTS THE COST PERMANENTLY TO THE EMPLOYER. Art. 83 LSS gives the employer the right to deduct the aporte personal when paying wages, and if it did not, to do so "en el pago siguiente o subsiguiente, como plazo máximo. Si no lo hiciere, esos aportes personales quedarán también de cargo del patrono, sin derecho a reembolso". A remediation run cannot recover an employee share more than two pay periods old. Art. 79 additionally voids any payment of contributions, discounts or fondos de reserva made directly to the worker instead of to the IESS. 9. AFFILIATION IS FROM DAY ONE. Art. 73 LSS: the employer must register the worker "desde el primer día de labor" and file the aviso de entrada within fifteen days. There is no waiting period, no hours test and no earnings threshold for entry into the scheme — unlike South Africa's 24-hour rule or Poland's minimum-wage threshold for its labour funds. Liability does not depend on nationality. 10. THE 3 % CESANTÍA LINE IS TWO POTS. The employee's 2 % is an individual, owned, interest-bearing account; the employer's 1 % is expressly solidario and pools. Do not report the 3 % as an accrued individual balance. Total for an ordinary private-sector employee: employee 9,45 % of materia gravada (6,64 IVM + 0,10 LOD + 2,00 cesantía + 0,35 campesino + 0,36 administración); employer 11,15 % (3,10 IVM + 5,71 salud + 0,55 riesgos + 1,00 cesantía + 0,35 campesino + 0,44 administración), plus 8,33 % fondo de reserva from month 13 of service, giving a real employer load of about 19,48 % for a settled employee. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: none. All rates, the floor and the base are national and identical in all 24 provinces. The only geographic distinction anywhere in Ecuadorian payroll is the PAYMENT DATE of the décimo cuarto sueldo — March in the Sierra and Amazonía, August in the Costa and Galápagos — which changes when money moves, never how much is contributed. Do not model provincial rate dimensions. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: 1. Décimo tercero and décimo cuarto sueldo — real mandatory employer costs, but flat labour-code entitlements (one twelfth of annual pay; one SBU respectively), not percentages of a base. They are named in the fondo de reserva notes so an engine knows they exist, and deliberately not priced as branches, because forcing them into a percent-of-base schema would misstate both. 2. Rates for afiliados sin relación de dependencia (trabajador autónomo, afiliado voluntario, trabajo no remunerado del hogar) — outside the scope of an ordinary private-sector employee. Those are computed on a Base Presuntiva de Aportación under arts. 13 and 15 LSS, and riesgos del trabajo for them IS risk-graded under art. 159 inciso segundo. 3. The sueldo básico sectorial values. There are several hundred occupational minimums fixed annually by the comisiones sectoriales, any of which can displace the USD 482 floor. The rule is served; the table is not, because it is occupation-specific and would have to be resolved per employee. 4. The other category tables in the same IESS instrument — bank, municipal and decentralised-public-entity employees (11,45 % personal / 11,15 % patronal), public servants (11,45 % / 9,15 %) and foreign-service officers resident abroad. They exist and are noted so a reader knows a 9,45 % figure is category-specific, but they are not this record's subject. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: nothing. No change to any of the seven branch rates is on the statute book or announced. The percentages have been stable since 1 January 2014, when Resolución C.D. 460 added the 0,10 % LOD levy and took the personal rate from 9,35 % to 9,45 %. WHAT WILL MOVE, AND WHEN: the SBU is re-fixed by Acuerdo Ministerial each December for the following 1 January (USD 470 in 2025, USD 482 in 2026). That moves the contribution FLOOR and the décimo cuarto amount, never the percentages. RE-VERIFY FROM 2026-12-15. The sueldo básico sectorial tables are re-issued on the same cycle. Note that the Consejo Directivo del IESS can change any branch percentage at any time by resolution under art. 15 LSS on the strength of an actuarial study, without legislation — so watching for statutory amendments is not sufficient; the IESS tasas-de-aportación table itself is the thing to re-read. SOURCING CAVEATS: The branch-by-branch percentages are taken from the IESS's own published tasas-de-aportación instrument, retrieved as a PDF and read in full including the three other category tables it contains. That table is the administering institution's own document and is the operative source. The underlying Consejo Directivo resolutions (C.D. 501 as reformed by C.D. 515, and C.D. 460 for the LOD levy) are cited from the IESS's own references to them, because both are published as scanned images without a usable text layer and could not be read verbatim. The Ley de Seguridad Social was read in full from the gob.ec consolidated text: arts. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 73, 79, 83, 111, 159, 160 and Disposición Transitoria Decimosexta verbatim, as were the unnumbered Seguro de Desempleo financing articles inserted by art. 6 of the 2016 Ley Orgánica. The 8,33 % fondo de reserva rate with its 2009 monthly-payment law, and the USD 482 SBU with its Acuerdo Ministerial number and Registro Oficial citation, are corroborated across multiple independent professional sources and international reporting of the December 2025 tripartite agreement rather than read off the gazette itself; no branch rate depends on either. 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/ec/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://latamref.dev/v1/ec/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://latamref.dev/provenance/ec/social-contributions

Other Ecuador series: BCE policy rate (none — fully dollarized economy) · IVA standard rate · VAT registration threshold · Salario Básico Unificado (SBU), monthly · Public holidays (feriados nacionales) · CPI inflation (year-on-year) · Corporate income tax rate · Withholding tax rates · Statutory legal interest (tasa de interés activa legal) · Personal income tax brackets

The same figure elsewhere: El Salvador · Guatemala · Guyana · Honduras · Jamaica · all 22