Guatemala Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

WHAT A PAYROLL ENGINE GETS WRONG IN GUATEMALA. 1. THE EMPLOYER RATE IS 12,67 %, NOT 10,67 %. The IGSS cuota patronal is 10,67 %, but the employer also pays 1 % to IRTRA (Decreto 1528) and 1 % to INTECAP (Decreto 17-72), both collected on the same IGSS planilla. An engine that models only the IGSS rate understates Guatemalan employer cost by two full points — nearly a sixth of the total. 2. THE BONIFICACIÓN INCENTIVO IS NOT PART OF THE CONTRIBUTION BASE. The Q 250,00 monthly bonificación incentivo under Decreto 78-89 as amended by Decreto 37-2001 is expressly excluded from the base for IGSS contributions, as are the aguinaldo and the Bono 14. This is the single most common Guatemalan payroll error: the worker's total monthly pay and the worker's IGSS base are different numbers on every payslip in the country, and every employee at the minimum wage has a base of Q 4.002,28 against a gross of Q 4.252,28. An engine that applies 4,83 % to gross over-deducts. 3. THERE IS NO SEPARATE OCCUPATIONAL-RISK BRANCH. Workplace accidents are covered inside the Programa de Enfermedad, Maternidad y Accidentes. Guatemala has no ARL, no mutual, no risk-rated employer premium and no activity-class table. An engine ported from Colombia, Chile, Panama, Costa Rica or the Dominican Republic will look for machinery that does not exist here, and one that invents an average rate will over-state cost. 4. THERE IS NO CEILING. Not on the IGSS contributions, not on IRTRA, not on INTECAP. The full 4,83 % and 12,67 % run on the whole reported salary however large. Guatemala is with Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia and Costa Rica in having no tope at all; do not import one from a neighbour. 5. GUATEMALA'S PENSION CONTRIBUTION IS THE SMALLEST IN THIS RECORD. 5,50 % of salary in total for Invalidez, Vejez y Sobrevivencia — against 16 % in Colombia, 22,5 % in Uruguay, 13,5 % in Chile and 13 % in Peru. There is no second pillar, no individual account and no mandatory complementary scheme. A model that expects a funded pillar will find nothing to populate. 6. THE ODD PERCENTAGES ARE REAL. 1,83 % and 3,67 % are the regulation figures, not roundings of a third and two thirds. They build the familiar headline rates exactly: 3,00 + 1,83 = 4,83 employee, and 7,00 + 3,67 = 10,67 employer. 7. THE RATES ARE SET BY IGSS BOARD REGULATION, NOT BY STATUTE. The Ley Orgánica creates the institute and the Junta Directiva's acuerdos carry the programme percentages and the collection rules (Acuerdo 1118). There is no Congress instrument to monitor for a rate change — watch the IGSS Junta Directiva instead. The two 1 % levies, by contrast, ARE in Decretos of the Congreso. 8. THE TWO 1 % LEVIES HAVE THEIR OWN SCOPE RULES. IRTRA is confined to the private sector under Decreto 1528; INTECAP's scope under Decreto 17-72 is defined differently. Liability for one does not establish liability for the other, and both should be confirmed against the employer's own IGSS registration rather than assumed from the fact that the employer is private. 9. THE EMPLOYEE PAYS NOTHING FOR IRTRA OR INTECAP. The whole of the employee's 4,83 % is IGSS: 3,00 % EMA plus 1,83 % IVS. Model rate_employee as a hard 0 on both levies. 10. GUATEMALA HAS TWO MINIMUM WAGES BY GEOGRAPHY, BUT ONE SET OF CONTRIBUTION RATES. The minimum wage is fixed by Circunscripción Económica — CE 1 covering the department of Guatemala and CE 2 the rest of the country — and separately for agricultural, non-agricultural and maquila activities. That changes the FLOOR OF PAY and therefore the contribution amount for minimum-wage workers, but it does not change any percentage. Do not confuse a regional minimum wage with a regional contribution rate. Total for an ordinary private-sector employee: employee 4,83 % of the IGSS base, uncapped; employer 12,67 % (10,67 IGSS + 1,00 IRTRA + 1,00 INTECAP), uncapped. Combined 17,50 % — one of the lightest total loads in this record, and materially lighter than the raw comparison suggests once the excluded bonificación incentivo, aguinaldo and Bono 14 are taken into account. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION IN RATES: none. All four percentages are national and identical in all 22 departamentos. Guatemala has no departmental payroll levy and no regional social-insurance rate, and — because occupational accidents sit inside the general EMA programme — no activity-based variation either. There IS geographic variation in the MINIMUM WAGE (Circunscripción Económica 1, the department of Guatemala, against Circunscripción Económica 2, the rest of the country, each with separate agricultural, non-agricultural and maquila rates), which changes the amount contributed by a minimum-wage worker but never the rate. Model the minimum wage regionally; do not model the rates regionally. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: 1. The State's participation in financing the IVS programme. It is real and it is provided for, but it is not a payroll charge on either the worker or the employer, and its magnitude was not read from the regulation. 2. Any occupational-risk rate. There is none to serve — accidents are inside the EMA programme. This is an absence in Guatemalan law, not a gap in this record. 3. The precise scope tests for the IRTRA and INTECAP levies. Both are served at 1 % because that is the rate every employer in scope pays; the scope conditions in Decreto 1528 and Decreto 17-72 were not read and are flagged as something to confirm per employer rather than asserted. 4. Aguinaldo, Bono 14 and the bonificación incentivo as employer costs. All three are mandatory — the aguinaldo and Bono 14 are each a month's salary a year and the bonificación incentivo is Q 250,00 a month — and all three are OUTSIDE the contribution base, which is why they are named prominently in the base definitions. They are fixed labour-law entitlements rather than percentage contributions and are not priced as branches. 5. The full minimum-wage table. The 2026 figure for Circunscripción Económica 1, non-agricultural activities, is served as Q 4.002,28 plus the Q 250,00 bonificación incentivo, to make the base-exclusion point concrete; the agricultural, maquila and CE 2 rates are not enumerated because they change the amount, never the rate. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: nothing. No change to the 4,83 % employee rate, the 10,67 % IGSS employer rate or either 1 % levy is on the statute book or announced. Note that the IGSS percentages can be changed by Junta Directiva acuerdo without legislation, so the absence of a pending Decreto is not by itself assurance. WHAT WILL MOVE, AND WHEN: the minimum wages by Circunscripción Económica are re-fixed by Acuerdo Gubernativo each December for the following 1 January. That moves the contribution AMOUNT for minimum-wage workers and nothing else. RE-VERIFY FROM 2026-12-15. SOURCING CAVEATS: The headline rates — 4,83 % employee and 10,67 % employer to the IGSS, plus 1 % IRTRA and 1 % INTECAP giving 12,67 % total employer — are consistent across every Guatemalan professional and payroll source consulted, and the Reglamento sobre Recaudación de Contribuciones al Régimen de Seguridad Social (Acuerdo 1118 de la Junta Directiva del IGSS) is identified as the collection instrument. The programme-level split served here — EMA 7,00 % employer and 3,00 % worker, IVS 3,67 % employer and 1,83 % worker — reconciles exactly to both headline figures and is the split conventionally published for the two IGSS programmes, but the individual programme regulations were not opened, so the attribution of each pair to its programme rests on that reconciliation and on secondary reproduction rather than on a read instrument. Note that at least one Guatemalan source publishes the employee split as IVS 3,83 % plus EMA 1,00 %, which also sums to 4,83 % but does not reconcile with the employer side; the split served here is the one that does. The exclusion of the bonificación incentivo, the aguinaldo and the Bono 14 from the contribution base, and the Decreto 78-89 and Decreto 37-2001 authority for the Q 250,00 bonificación, are consistently reported but were not read from those Decretos. The 2026 minimum wage of Q 4.002,28 for Circunscripción Económica 1 non-agricultural activities is taken from Guatemalan national press reporting of the annual Acuerdo Gubernativo; no contribution rate depends on it. 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/gt/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://latamref.dev/v1/gt/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://latamref.dev/provenance/gt/social-contributions

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The same figure elsewhere: Guyana · Honduras · Jamaica · Mexico · Nicaragua · all 22