Every month, employees stare at the deduction lines on their pay slips and try to recalculate in their heads. Five percent for BPJS Kesehatan, three percent for Pension Insurance, and some percentage for Old Age Security. The numbers never match. The mistake is usually not in the percentages, but in the wage base used.
The same error appears on the payroll side, in a neater form and therefore harder to spot: one column for "salary" is used for all programs, and then each program is simply multiplied by its percentage. The results are consistent, yet still incorrect.
Each program has its own wage limit
BPJS Kesehatan. The contribution is 5 percent of the monthly salary, divided into 4 percent borne by the employer and 1 percent deducted from the employee. The upper limit of the wage used as the calculation base is Rp 12,000,000, while the lower limit is the minimum wage of the district or city. A salary of Rp 15,000,000 is still calculated based on Rp 12,000,000. The provisions are stated in Article 30 of Presidential Regulation 64/2020.
Pension Insurance. The contribution is 3 percent, divided into 2 percent from the employer and 1 percent from the employee. The upper wage limit is not a fixed number. Government Regulation 45/2015 Article 29 requires annual adjustments based on the previous year's gross domestic product growth rate, and this adjustment takes effect starting in March. As of March 2026, the limit increases to Rp 11,086,300, up from Rp 10,547,400 which has been in effect since March 2025.
JHT, JKK, and JKM. None of these have an upper wage limit. JHT is 5.7 percent, divided into 3.7 percent from the employer and 2 percent from the employee. JKK is fully borne by the employer, with five levels of work risk ranging from 0.24 percent to 1.74 percent. JKM is 0.30 percent, also fully borne by the employer. For high salaries, these three contributions continue to rise with the salary, while the first two have already stopped at their limits.
The most frequently expired figures
Because the Pension Insurance limit shifts every March, a payroll system that is not updated will use the previous year's wage base for ten months before anyone notices.
What makes this difficult to prevent: many references in circulation, including those that appear official, still contain figures from the previous year because their articles are not updated every March. Therefore, ensuring that the figures refer to the current year is more important than ensuring the source appears official.
The most commonly confused part of PPh 21
BPJS contributions are included in the PPh 21 calculation, but not all of them and not in the same way.
The employer's portion of contributions for JKK, JKM, and BPJS Kesehatan adds to the employee's gross income. The employer's portion for JHT and Pension Insurance does not add to the gross. Meanwhile, the contributions deducted from employees do not reduce the monthly gross.
Since Government Regulation 58/2023 and Ministerial Regulation 168/2023, PPh 21 for the period from January to November is calculated by multiplying the monthly gross income by a single effective rate from the table, according to the PTKP status category. Only in the final tax period in December does the employer recalculate for the full year using the rate from Article 17, taking into account the job expense of 5 percent with a limit of Rp 500,000 per month or Rp 6,000,000 per year, pension contributions paid by employees, and PTKP. The difference from the deductions in the previous eleven months is settled in that month.
The consequences need to be considered. An incorrect wage base in a regular month does not always appear as an error, because the total will also be corrected in December. What changes is the form of correction: it accumulates all at once in one year-end pay slip, in a month when cash flow is typically the most congested for both parties.
To quickly check a case without rearranging the worksheet, a salary, PPh 21, and BPJS calculator is available that separates the wage base for each program and indicates which contributions add to the gross.
Sources
- What is the Contribution Amount for JHT, JKK, JKM, JP, and JKP?, BPJS Ketenagakerjaan
- Presidential Regulation Number 64 of 2020, JDIH BPK Regulation Database
- Ministerial Regulation 168 of 2023 on PPh Article 21, Directorate General of Taxes
- Adjustment of the Maximum Wage Limit for BPJS Ketenagakerjaan Pension Insurance as of March 2026, BSC Indonesia