Your offer letter says ₱30,000 a month. Your first payslip says ₱26,542.45. The gap is not a mistake, and it is not tax alone — three of the four deductions are not tax at all.

Here is exactly where that ₱3,457.55 goes, using the schedules the agencies themselves publish.

The four things taken from a Philippine payslip

on a ₱30,000 monthly salary

SSS                    ₱1,500.00
PhilHealth               ₱750.00
Pag-IBIG                 ₱200.00
withholding tax        ₱1,007.55
                       ──────────
take-home             ₱26,542.45

The first three are contributions. They buy you something — a pension, hospital cover, a savings account you get back. Only the fourth is tax.

SSS — 5% of your salary credit, capped

The total SSS rate is 15% of your Monthly Salary Credit. You pay a third of it: 5%. Your employer pays the other 10%, plus a small Employees' Compensation premium of ₱10 or ₱30 that never comes out of your pay.

Your Monthly Salary Credit is not your exact salary. It is your salary rounded into a ₱500 band, and it stops at ₱35,000. So your SSS deduction rises with your pay until ₱35,000 and then stays at ₱1,750 forever. Someone on ₱35,000 and someone on ₱200,000 pay the same SSS.

PhilHealth — 2.5% of salary, with a floor and a ceiling

The premium is 5% of your monthly basic salary, split down the middle with your employer, so 2.5% comes from you. It is floored at a ₱10,000 salary and capped at ₱100,000, which means the smallest premium you can pay is ₱250 and the largest is ₱2,500.

Unlike SSS, there is no rounding into bands. It is a straight percentage of your basic pay.

Pag-IBIG — ₱200, for almost everyone

Two per cent of your Fund Salary, matched by your employer. The Fund Salary is capped at ₱10,000, so the employee share is ₱200 a month for anyone earning ₱10,000 or more — which is most people. Below ₱10,000 it is 2% of what you actually earned.

This is the deduction people most often assume is bigger than it is. It is ₱200 whether you earn ₱10,000 or ₱300,000.

Withholding tax — and the part that surprises people

Tax is calculated after the other three are taken out, not on your gross. On a ₱30,000 salary the taxman looks at ₱27,550, not ₱30,000. Your contributions are excluded from taxable income, so they cost you slightly less than they appear to.

The monthly brackets:

taxable pay              monthly withholding tax
₱20,833 and below        none
₱20,833 – ₱33,332        15% of the excess over ₱20,833
₱33,333 – ₱66,666        ₱1,875.00 + 20% of the excess over ₱33,333
₱66,667 – ₱166,666       ₱8,541.80 + 25% of the excess over ₱66,667
₱166,667 – ₱666,666      ₱33,541.80 + 30% of the excess over ₱166,667
₱666,667 and above       ₱183,541.80 + 35% of the excess over ₱666,667

So on ₱30,000: taxable pay is ₱27,550, that sits in the second band, and the tax is 15% of ₱6,717 — ₱1,007.55.

Note where the first band ends. If your taxable pay is ₱20,833 or less you pay no income tax at all, and because contributions come off first, that covers a gross salary of roughly ₱22,500.

What it looks like across salaries

gross       SSS    PhilHealth  Pag-IBIG      tax        take-home    kept
₱15,000    ₱750       ₱375       ₱200        ₱0        ₱13,675.00   91.2%
₱20,000  ₱1,000       ₱500       ₱200        ₱0        ₱18,300.00   91.5%
₱25,000  ₱1,250       ₱625       ₱200      ₱313.80     ₱22,611.20   90.4%
₱30,000  ₱1,500       ₱750       ₱200    ₱1,007.55     ₱26,542.45   88.5%
₱40,000  ₱1,750     ₱1,000       ₱200    ₱2,618.40     ₱34,431.60   86.1%
₱50,000  ₱1,750     ₱1,250       ₱200    ₱4,568.40     ₱42,231.60   84.5%
₱75,000  ₱1,750     ₱1,875       ₱200    ₱9,668.80     ₱61,506.20   82.0%
₱100,000 ₱1,750     ₱2,500       ₱200   ₱15,762.55     ₱79,787.45   79.8%
₱150,000 ₱1,750     ₱2,500       ₱200   ₱28,262.55    ₱117,287.45   78.2%

Two things stand out. Someone on ₱20,000 keeps a slightly larger share of their pay than someone on ₱15,000, because Pag-IBIG is a flat ₱200 either way — which is 1.3% of the smaller salary and 1.0% of the larger one. And from ₱40,000 upwards the contributions barely move — SSS is capped, Pag-IBIG is flat, and every extra peso of deduction after that is tax.

Checking your own payslip

Contributions are monthly, not per payslip. If you are paid twice a month you will usually see half of each, or the whole amount on one of the two. Add both payslips before comparing with the tables above.

SSS should match your salary band, not your salary. Divide by 0.05 and you get your Monthly Salary Credit. If that is not your pay rounded to the nearest ₱500 band, or is above ₱35,000, ask.

Pag-IBIG above ₱200 is not an error. Members can choose to save more than the mandatory amount, and some employers set that up at onboarding. It is your money either way.

The employer's side is not a deduction. On ₱30,000 your employer also pays ₱3,010 SSS, ₱750 PhilHealth and ₱200 Pag-IBIG — about ₱33,980 all in. It should never appear as something taken from you.

Where these figures come from

SSS: Circular 2024-006, signed 19 December 2024, "Schedule of SSS Contributions Effective January 2025", issued under RA 11199. It is still the schedule in force — despite the number of pages online titled "SSS contribution table 2026", no later circular has changed it. The 2025 and 2026 circulars cover loans, pensions and administration.

PhilHealth: Advisory 2026-0042 and the employer contribution table, both under RA 11223 and PhilHealth Circular 2020-0005 (Revision 1). The 5% rate has applied since January 2024.

Pag-IBIG: the Fund's own member guidance, implementing HDMF Circular 460 from February 2024. One point of confusion is worth clearing up. Many payroll sites still publish a 1% member rate for a Fund Salary of ₱1,500 and below. That belonged to the old ₱5,000 Fund Salary cap. The Fund's current guidance names no such band and says 2% of actual earnings for anyone under ₱10,000, and that is what is used here.

Tax: Annex "E" of BIR Revenue Regulations RR 11-2018, the revised withholding table effective 1 January 2023 and onwards.

What this does not cover

Regular monthly pay only. Thirteenth-month pay, bonuses, overtime, night differential and de minimis benefits follow different rules — the first ₱90,000 of thirteenth-month and other benefits in a year is tax-exempt, and the excess is taxed.

Your employer may deduct other things. Salary loans, HMO share, union dues, tardiness. Those are between you and your employer and are not on any government schedule.

This is the withholding, not your final tax. Withholding is an estimate collected monthly. What you actually owe is settled at year end, which is why some people get a refund in December.

Figures are computed, not copied. Every peso above comes from applying the agencies' published schedules in code rather than from another site's table. Even so, check anything you are about to act on against the agency's own page, and check the date.