Employers are required to pay a monthly Skills Development Levy (SDL) contribution for all employees rendering services in Singapore, including foreign employees and employees employed on a casual, part-time or temporary basis. There are a few exceptions such as domestic servants, gardeners and chauffeurs, who are exempted from the SDL Act.
SDL collected is used to support workforce upgrading programmes and to provide training grants to employers when they send their employees to attend training under Singapore’s national Continuing Education and Training system.
The amount of SDL payable is computed as 0.25% of an employee’s monthly wage, the definition of which is quite wide and includes most of the common types of payments made through payroll such as salary, commission, bonus, leave pay, overtime pay, allowance and other payments in cash. There is a minimum amount payable for employees earning less than a certain amount a month, as well as a maximum for employees earning more than a certain amount a month.
For more information about SDL, including exemptions and the minimum and maximum amounts payable, please visit the SDL website.
In addition to the above information, you could also refer to the CPF Board site.
SimplePay calculates SDL automatically and adds it to payslips unless an employee is marked as SDL exempt. For more information about how to change an employee’s exemption status, as well as how to deal with SDL rounding issues, please refer to: