China Tax & Social Insurance

About this tool

This online calculator pairs individual income tax with the five-insurances-one-fund breakdown and a year-end bonus comparison. The tax tab uses China's cumulative-withholding method to derive this-period and annual tax, net pay, average rate and take-home ratio from gross salary, employee social insurance, special additional deductions and the pay period, and lays out all twelve months of the withholding schedule. The social-insurance tab multiplies each rate - pension, medical, unemployment, work injury and housing fund, on the employee and employer side - by the contribution base, and can carry the employee total straight into the tax tab. The bonus tab computes both methods for your annual one-time bonus - taxed separately versus merged into comprehensive income - and shows which one saves money and by how much. The reverse tab takes the monthly take-home you want and solves for the gross you need to ask for, bracket by bracket, checked against the forward calculator. All four run locally in your browser.

Tax method and special deductions

How cumulative withholding works

Wages are computed on a year-to-date basis: cumulative taxable income = cumulative income - (5,000 x months) - cumulative employee social insurance - cumulative special additional deductions; the annual rate table turns that into cumulative tax due, and the amount already withheld in earlier months is subtracted to give this month's tax. So the same salary is taxed lightly in the early months and jumps into a higher bracket later as the cumulative figure rises, settling to the annual total.

Reading the month-by-month table

Each row is one pay period. Cumulative taxable income grows linearly with the months, and the applicable bracket steps up as it crosses 36,000, 144,000 and the other thresholds - the marked month is where the jump happens, so that month's tax is visibly higher and the net pay lower. Click any period to move the totals above to that month. The two figures in the 'Full year' row must equal the 'Annual tax' and 'Annual take-home' cards - that is the quickest way to check the arithmetic.

Seven special additional deductions (per month)

• Children's education: 2,000 CNY / child
• Infant care under 3: 2,000 CNY / infant
• Continuing education: 400 CNY (academic); 3,600 in the year of a vocational certificate
• Mortgage interest: 1,000 CNY
• Housing rent: 800 / 1,100 / 1,500 CNY by city
• Elderly support: 3,000 CNY (only child)
• Serious-illness medical: the self-paid part over 15,000 CNY a year, capped at 80,000 CNY

How to tick the deductions

Why the typed number still wins over the ticks

What the seven special additional deductions add up to depends on your family: children's education and infant care are 2,000 CNY per child per month, then split between the parents; continuing education is either 400 CNY a month for academic study or 3,600 CNY in the year you get a vocational certificate; first-home mortgage interest is 1,000 CNY a month and housing rent is 1,500/1,100/800 by city, and those two cannot both be claimed in the same year; elderly support depends on whether you are an only child and how many siblings share; serious-illness medical is the odd one out - it is only deductible in the annual reconciliation on the self-paid amount above 15,000 CNY, capped at 80,000. That is awkward to add up in your head, so the tick list totals it for you - but many people already have a figure their employer used or they worked out themselves, so the special-additional-deductions box above stays the number that actually applies. The ticks only produce it; edit the box and it holds until you touch a tick again.

What the five insurances and fund are

The five insurances and one fund

The five insurances are pension, medical, unemployment, work injury and maternity, plus one housing fund. Pension is 8% employee / 16% employer nationwide; medical is 2% / about 9.5% (maternity is folded in in most cities); unemployment is about 0.5% on both sides; work injury is paid entirely by the employer at 0.2%-1.9% by risk, nothing by the employee; the housing fund uses the same rate on both sides, chosen between 5% and 12%.

Base and take-home

The contribution base is usually last year's average monthly salary, bounded by local caps (adjusted each July). The employee side is deducted straight from the salary; take-home is what remains after employee contributions and income tax. The employer side is a separate labour cost - gross salary plus the employer contributions.

How the year-end bonus is taxed

Separate taxation or merging into comprehensive income

A bonus can be taxed two ways. Plan A taxes it separately: divide the bonus by 12, find that monthly figure in the converted rate table, then apply that rate and quick deduction to the whole bonus - no 5,000 CNY threshold is deducted again. Plan B adds the bonus to your annual comprehensive income and runs the total through the annual table. Salary is taxed identically either way; only the marginal rate on the bonus differs. If your salary already pushes you into a higher band than the bonus would, merging wins; if your salary is low or untaxed, separate taxation usually wins. This page computes both numbers so you can read the difference instead of memorising rules of thumb.

Why one extra CNY can cost you thousands

Separate taxation applies the rate to the whole bonus (bonus x rate - quick deduction) rather than progressively across bands. So just above 36,000, 144,000 and the other thresholds the entire bonus is re-taxed at the next rate while the quick deduction only compensates part of it - within that short stretch, a bigger bonus means a smaller net amount. That is the threshold trap; the table above lists all six zones and the worst-case loss. The rule of thumb: keep the bonus exactly at a threshold or push it past the end of the zone. Merging into comprehensive income is genuinely progressive, so it has no such jump.

From take-home back to gross

Why we solve on annual take-home rather than this month's

Wages use cumulative withholding, so no two months take home the same amount: early in the year the cumulative taxable figure is small and sits in a low band, while the month that crosses a threshold catches up on the under-withheld tax and drops noticeably. 'This month's net is X' therefore drifts with the pay period - one gross can take home several thousand more in period 1 than in period 12. Solving on a single period is also not monotone: a raise that pushes you into a higher band can make the catch-up larger than the raise, so that month's net falls, and the target has no unique answer. This tool solves on annual take-home divided by twelve, which is strictly monotone in gross and is the figure you actually negotiate.

How the reverse solve works

Let g be the gross, si the employee social insurance and sp the special additional deductions. The monthly taxable base is b = g - si - sp - 5,000 and the annual taxable income is T = 12b. Inside one bracket of the annual table (rate r, quick deduction d) the annual take-home is 12g - 12si - (T*r - d) = 12b(1 - r) + 12(sp + 5,000) + d, which is linear in b - so b falls out in one step and adding si, sp and the 5,000 threshold gives g. We try each bracket and keep the one whose T actually lands inside it; monotonicity means at most one can. The result is then re-checked with the forward calculator, and if the two disagree the tool reports a failure instead of showing a wrong number.

FAQ

Why is tax low early in the year and high late, for the same salary?

Because wages use cumulative withholding. The cumulative taxable figure climbs through the brackets, so the first months sit in the 3% band and later months jump into 10% or 20% as it accumulates; the year-to-date total equals what the annual table owes. This tool shows that month-by-month change via the pay-period selector.

How do employee social-insurance contributions affect tax?

They are subtracted from taxable income as a special deduction before the rate table is applied, so more contributions mean a smaller taxable base and less tax. Filling in the housing-fund rate and social base accurately is what makes the take-home realistic.

What are the threshold and the special additional deductions?

5,000 CNY per month is the basic deduction (the threshold) everyone gets. The special additional deductions are seven items - children's education, continuing education, serious-illness medical, mortgage interest, housing rent, elderly support and infant care under 3 - each with its own standard. Both stack before the rate table applies.

Where did maternity go? Do I pay work injury?

Since 2019 maternity insurance is widely merged into the employee medical scheme, so it is not listed separately and is already inside medical here. Work injury is paid entirely by the employer, never the employee, at 0.2%-1.9% by industry risk; this tool defaults to 0.4% and lets you change it.

Rates differ by city - what do I do?

This tool is not tied to any city and uses common nationwide reference values, and every employee and employer rate is editable. Check your local social-insurance and housing-fund centres for the actual rates, base caps and fund tiers, then overwrite the defaults to recompute.

About this tool

The tax & social-insurance calculator turns the everyday 'what do I actually take home' question into one page with four tabs: the social-insurance tab converts a gross salary into every employee and employer line and their totals, the tax tab applies cumulative withholding to give this-period and annual tax, take-home and a month-by-month breakdown, the bonus tab lays both year-end bonus methods side by side and tells you which one wins and by how much, and the reverse tab answers the negotiation question the other way round - give it a target take-home and it returns the gross you need. The convention matches mainstream online tools, so it is useful for payslip checks, offer comparison, bonus planning and contribution planning.

Everything is computed in your own browser: the rate table, deduction standards and contribution rates ship inside the page scripts, there is no backend and no network request, and your inputs live only in this device's local storage. The server never sees your salary.

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Pure front-end · cumulative withholding · free · 中文 / 繁體 / English