Payslip Decoder (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia)
Decode your Singapore, Malaysia or Indonesia payslip line by line. For each item: what it is, whose money it is, whether you can opt out, and how to verify it yourself — with the statutory amounts your wage should produce, so you can compare them against what your slip actually says. Every rule is quoted from its own agency with the date it was read. Runs entirely in your browser.
Payslip Decoder (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia)
Payslips are written for payroll systems, not for the people paid by them. Pick your country, then look up any line that is printed on yours: what it is, whose money it is, whether you can opt out of it, and how to check it yourself. Everything runs in your browser.
What is this line on my payslip?
Type it exactly as printed — abbreviations and brackets included. If it isn’t recognised you’ll be told, rather than shown a guess.
Check the statutory lines against your pay
What each statutory contribution should come to on your wage — so you can compare it with what your slip actually says.
⚠ Disclaimer: Estimates only — not tax, financial, or legal advice, and not a substitute for the official computation. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or representing any government agency referenced on this page; agency names are used for identification only. Statutory rates and rules change (sometimes without notice); the figures reflect the "rates as at" date shown on this page, and the official source always prevails — verify with the relevant agency or a qualified professional before acting. Actual amounts may differ due to statutory band tables, official rounding rules, and employer or payroll-software practices. All calculations run locally in your browser; no salary or personal data is transmitted or stored.
Every line, grouped by whose money it is
How much can lawfully be deducted
How to use the Payslip Decoder
Pick the country you are paid in
Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia run different systems, and the same word can mean different things in each. The whole page follows your choice.
Look up a line from your slip
Type it exactly as printed — abbreviations, brackets and all. If it is not recognised, you are told so plainly rather than shown a confident guess.
Check the statutory lines against your pay
Enter your gross monthly pay to see what each statutory contribution should come to. Small gaps are normal; large ones are worth a question.
Read the whole list
Every line is grouped by whose money it is — yours, your employer’s, or neither. The employer group is the one most often misread as lost pay.
Reading a payslip in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia
Most people never read their payslip closely, and the reason is not incuriosity — it is that the document is written for a payroll system rather than for the person being paid. Codes are abbreviated, employer costs sit next to employee deductions with no visual difference between them, and the one number most readers look at, the net figure at the bottom, is the number that explains the least.
The single most useful distinction on any payslip is whose money each line is. A deduction reduces what reaches your bank account. An employer contribution does not — it is paid on top of your wage, and it appears on the slip only because payroll systems like to show the full cost of employing you. Confusing the two is the most common misreading there is, and it always runs in the same direction: people believe they are losing money they never had taken.
The most common misreading of a payslip always runs the same way: people believe they lost money that was never taken from them.
The three countries here diverge in a way that catches people who move between them. Singapore withholds no income tax monthly at all — you are assessed after filing and settle with IRAS yourself, which is why a Singapore slip looks so much shorter than its neighbours. Malaysia withholds monthly through PCB. Indonesia withholds through PPh 21, and since the move to average-rate withholding its December figure routinely differs from the other eleven months by a wide margin, alarming people every single year.
Each country also limits how much can lawfully be taken. All three land on the same headline figure — half of a pay period — but the exceptions are where the real answer lives. In Singapore, deductions for absence and for recovering a loan or advance sit outside the cap entirely, which is precisely why a month with unpaid leave can lawfully take more than half your pay and still be lawful. A tool that reported a flat fifty per cent would be wrong in exactly the month you needed it to be right.
Some lines can be stopped and some cannot. Singapore’s self-help group contributions are deducted by default but you may opt out, and you do that with the fund rather than with payroll — a distinction that sends a lot of people to the wrong desk. Statutory contributions to CPF, EPF, SOCSO and BPJS cannot be opted out of by an employee. And a few lines should never be in your deductions column at all: the HRD Corp levy in Malaysia and the work-accident and death cover in Indonesia are employer obligations, so seeing them taken from your pay is itself the finding.
10 Facts About ASEAN Payslips
Singapore is the outlier of the three: it does not withhold income tax from monthly pay at all. Malaysia (PCB) and Indonesia (PPh 21) both do.
Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower caps total salary deductions at half of a salary period’s pay — but absence, loan and advance recovery, and co-operative payments all sit outside that cap.
CPF does not count toward Singapore’s 50% deduction cap, because it is mandatory rather than an authorised deduction.
When employment is terminated, Singapore’s cap is lifted entirely: the total authorised deduction may exceed half the final payment.
HRD Corp’s own guidelines state that employee wages may not be deducted for the training levy under any circumstances. If it appears in your deductions column, that deduction is not permitted.
An Indonesian payslip never has one “BPJS” total. Two separate bodies administer it — BPJS Ketenagakerjaan for employment cover, BPJS Kesehatan for health — and slips itemise them apart.
Indonesia’s JHT is uncapped while JP and Kesehatan are capped, so on a higher salary those lines stop rising while JHT keeps climbing.
The Indonesian pension cap is re-indexed every March, so that line can change without your salary changing.
THR is not a discretionary bonus. It is mandatory, worth a month’s wage at a year’s service, pro-rated below that, and must be paid in full — not in instalments — before the religious holiday.
Malaysian SOCSO and EIS come from banded tables rather than flat percentages, which is why the amounts land on odd numbers of sen instead of round figures.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Because Singapore does not operate monthly withholding. Only CPF and any self-help group contribution come off your pay each month; income tax is assessed after you file and you pay IRAS yourself. If a tax line does appear, it is normally either an arrangement you asked payroll to set up, or tax clearance for a non-citizen leaving Singapore.
- No. The employer share is paid on top of your wage, into your CPF accounts. Many payroll systems print it beside your own deductions, which makes it look like something taken from you. This tool groups it separately for exactly that reason.
- In Singapore the general answer is no, but the cap has carve-outs: deductions for absence, for recovering an advance, loan or overpayment, and consented co-operative payments are all outside it — so a month with heavy unpaid leave can lawfully take more than half. Malaysia and Indonesia each set their own 50% limit. The exact wording for your country is quoted on the page.
- Yes. These are deducted by default rather than compulsorily, and you opt out with the fund itself, not with your payroll team. Each line in the list links to the fund that administers it.
- Because SOCSO and EIS are not percentages. PERKESO publishes a banded table and your wage falls into a band, so the contribution is a fixed amount for that band rather than a clean fraction of your salary.
- They are two different administrators. Ketenagakerjaan handles employment cover — old-age savings (JHT), pension (JP), work accident (JKK), death (JKM) and job-loss (JKP). Kesehatan handles health. Looking for JHT under a health heading is why the two are so often confused.
- The pension wage cap is re-indexed each March. If you earn above the cap, your contribution is computed on the cap rather than your salary, so it moves when the cap moves. That is expected behaviour, not a payroll error.
- Under the TER system most months are withheld at an average effective rate keyed to your PTKP status, and the real annual calculation is performed in the final month. December therefore carries the correction for the whole year and commonly differs sharply. Check that your PTKP status is right — a wrong status quietly mis-withholds all year.
- No. It is a statutory entitlement, not a bonus. Twelve months of continuous service earns a full month’s wage; between one and twelve months it is pro-rated. It must be paid in full and before the holiday, so late payment or instalments are a compliance failure you can raise.
- The calculation assumes a straightforward full monthly wage. Real slips differ for legitimate reasons: mid-month joiners and leavers, allowances that fall in or out of the contribution base, arrears, and each employer’s own rounding. A small gap is normal. A large or persistent one is worth asking about.
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