Malta social security contributions: Class 1 rates and the ceiling

How Class 1 works

Part I of the Tenth Schedule to the Social Security Act (Cap. 318) sets Class 1 contributions for employed persons as a weekly amount in five lettered categories. For an employee aged 18 or over in ordinary employment the rate is 10% of basic weekly wage, calculated to the nearest cent, from the employee and the same again from the employer. Below a basic weekly wage of €213.54 the schedule substitutes a flat weekly amount of €21.35 from each side, category B, unless a part-time employee elects to pay 10% of actual pay instead.

Above the top of category C the schedule again substitutes a flat weekly amount, which is what produces the ceiling. Because the ceiling is a cash amount rather than a percentage, the contribution stops growing while the salary does not, and the effective rate falls steadily as pay rises.

Contribution on basic wage, not on everything

• Basic wage or salary is the measure. The schedule refers throughout to the basic weekly wage or the weekly equivalent of the basic monthly salary, so overtime and the statutory bonuses sit outside it.
• Two birth cohorts, two ceilings. The schedule splits categories C and D by whether the person was born on or before 31 December 1961 or on or after 1 January 1962. The later cohort has the higher ceiling because its maximum pensionable income is higher.
• Employees under 18 on low pay sit in category A at a flat weekly amount, and student-worker schemes have their own capped categories, E and F.
• The employer pays a maternity fund contribution too, 0.3% of basic weekly wage under Part IV of the same schedule, subject to its own small floor and ceiling. It is separate from the 10% and is not matched by the employee.

The self-employed pay differently

Class 2 contributions, in Parts II and III of the Tenth Schedule, are charged on annual net earnings at 15% between category thresholds rather than 10% of weekly pay, with flat weekly amounts at the bottom and top of the scale. A self-employed person therefore carries what is, in effect, both halves of the employed contribution. The calculator on this site is a Class 1 tool and does not model Class 2.

Verify the figures before you run a payroll. The weekly amounts in the Tenth Schedule as consolidated on 10 March 2026 come from Legal Notice 10 of 2025, which took effect on 1 January 2024, and no later amendment to that schedule appears in the consolidated Act. Malta adjusts these amounts by legal notice, so the ceiling in particular should be confirmed against the current year's rate sheet from the Department of Social Security. The 10% rate itself has been stable; the cash amounts are what move.