SSS self-employed contribution: paying SSS after you come home

If you come home and earn from your own business or work, SSS covers you as a self-employed member. You declare your monthly earnings, they set your monthly salary credit (MSC), and you pay the whole contribution yourself: 15% of the MSC plus Employees’ Compensation (EC), from PHP 760 to PHP 5,280 a month under SSS Circular 2024-008, which is still the schedule in force. You switch from OFW with the Member Data Change Request (SS Form E-4) or online in My.SSS (SSS Circular 2022-018).

Who counts as self-employed

SSS’s self-employed page defines a self-employed person as “one engaged in any trade, business, or occupation, who has no ER other than himself, whose income is derived from his/her physical and mental efforts and not from employment”. Its list includes self-employed professionals, partners and single proprietors, individual farmers and fishermen, and informal-sector workers such as market vendors and transport workers. Coverage is compulsory (RA 11199 Sec. 9-A).

Points from the same page that matter after years abroad:

• Age. An existing member who becomes self-employed after their 60th birthday but before their 65th is still covered.
• Hiring staff. If you employ people, you also register as an employer and get an employer number.
• Months with no earnings. “In the event the SE member does not realize earnings in a month, payment of SSS contribution is no longer required.”

Switching from OFW to self-employed

You keep your SS number. Only your membership type changes, and there are two ways to do it:

• SS Form E-4 at a branch. SSS’s membership page says members changing from employee, OFW, voluntary or non-working spouse to self-employed fill in the Member Data Change Request (SS Form E-4) and submit it to the nearest SSS branch. In part A of the form you tick your old type, then give your profession or business, the year it started and your monthly earnings. The form’s instructions list no documents for this change.
• Online in My.SSS. SSS Circular 2022-018 lists “OFW to Self-Employed” (and voluntary, employee and non-working spouse to self-employed) as changes you can request online. SSS emails the acknowledgement and its decision, and posts both in your My.SSS inbox. The branch route stays open.

Your self-employed coverage starts with the month of your first self-employed payment, but no earlier than the start of the business you declared (SSS self-employed page). If you have already paid as self-employed without changing your type, SSS asks for SS Form E-4 with the year of your first self-employed contribution as the start of business, plus an affidavit declaring your source of income.

How it differs from voluntary membership

Voluntary membership is the other way to keep paying after an overseas contract ends. The two are for different situations:

Scroll the table sideways for more

EC is a separate programme for “work-connected sickness or injury resulting to disability or death” (SSS self-employed page). Choosing voluntary on a PRN counts as your declaration that you “did not have any income or earnings as a self-employed for the period” paid. More on that side is in voluntary SSS contributions.

Declaring earnings and your MSC

The monthly earnings you declare on your registration form (the E-1 or the E-4) are the basis of your MSC, until you declare new ones (RA 11199 Sec. 19-A). SSS’s self-employed page adds:

• Declared earnings “should be based on actual earnings”, and you do not have to show proof.
• Under 55, you can change your MSC as often as you like and by as many brackets as you like, without a written request, but never below the minimum of PHP 5,000.
• 55 and over, you can raise it only once a calendar year, and by one bracket from your last posted MSC. The exception is a member already at the maximum when a new schedule raises it.
• You can lower your MSC at any time, down to the minimum.

Under Circular 2024-008, earnings below PHP 5,250 give an MSC of PHP 5,000, and MSCs go up in PHP 500 steps to PHP 35,000 for earnings of PHP 34,750 and over. EC is PHP 10 a month below an MSC of PHP 15,000 and PHP 30 from PHP 15,000.

SSS does not publish how to work out a business’s monthly earnings for this declaration, for example whether expenses come off first. The SSS contribution calculator shows what any MSC costs and how it splits.

Paying and deadlines

• Pay with a PRN. Generate it in My.SSS, then pay at an SSS branch with tellers, an accredited bank, a non-bank collecting partner, or through the SSS mobile app (SSS self-employed page). The steps are in how to pay SSS contributions.
• Monthly or quarterly. The deadline is the last day of the month after the month, or the calendar quarter, you are paying for (SSS Pay Contributions page). If it falls on a weekend or holiday, pay on the next working day.
• This is a change from OFW rules. As a land-based OFW you could pay January to September by 31 December. As a self-employed member, each month or quarter has its own deadline.
• No late payment. SSS’s self-employed page says months without posted contributions “shall already be considered as ‘gaps’ and back-payment to fill those gaps (i.e., retroactive payment of contributions) is not allowed”.
• Paying ahead is allowed for any number of months. If the schedule changes in the meantime, you may have to pay the difference to keep the same MSC (SSS Pay Contributions page).

Dates for every member type are in SSS payment deadlines.

What it means for your pension

• Your count keeps going. Self-employed months count toward the 120 monthly contributions a pension needs, on the same SS number as your OFW years (RA 11199 Sec. 12-B).
• Salary credit up to PHP 20,000 counts for the pension. Circular 2024-008 says retirement and other regular benefits are worked out on an MSC from PHP 5,000 to PHP 20,000. Contributions on MSC above PHP 20,000, up to PHP 35,000, go to your own Mandatory Provident Fund account, paid out with your regular benefit. See the SSS MPF guide.
• Retiring while the business runs. At 60 you can claim the pension only once you have “ceased to be self-employed”; at 65 the law has no such condition. If you retire before 65 and then restart self-employment, the pension is suspended (Sec. 12-B).

If you are starting the business with OWWA’s help, see our guide to OWWA’s reintegration programme.

Back to the SSS guide for OFWs.