The Social Security Fund (abbreviated to FSS in Macao) reminds employers to pay contributions for their casual workers on time.  Late payers must pay a late payment interest and they are also liable to a financial penalty.

In Macao, if an employer has hired a casual worker (i.e., hiring a local employee to work for him/her under a term labour contract), he/she must pay contributions for the employee in the month that follows the employee’s working month.  For instance, if an employee works in February, his/her contributions should be paid in March.

The Executive Order set out the contributions for casual workers as follows:

For late payment of contributions of casual workers, the employer must pay a late payment interest if the default contributions are rectified within 60 days after the statutory payment period.  The late payment interest is calculated based on a monthly interest rate of 3% on the amount of default contributions, where a fraction of a month shall also be counted as a full month, and the minimum amount of late payment interest is 50 patacas.  If the default contributions remain unpaid after 60 days, in addition to a late payment interest, the employer is also liable to a minimum fine of 500 patacas up to half of the amount of contributions payable.

In addition, if the hired employee has never been enrolled as a beneficiary of the FSS, the employer must, at the same time, enroll him/her within the month that follows the working month of the casual worker.  Otherwise, the employer is liable to a fine between 200 and 1,000 patacas for each employee affected by his/her infractions.

For more information about the contributions of casual workers, please call 2853 2850 during office hours or visit the FSS website at www.fss.gov.mo/en/social/social-mandatory.