SSS Sickness Benefit is truly a life saver especially when you are one of the workers who depends only on daily or monthly salary to meet the basic needs. Most probably, there is that curiosity at the back of your mind on how to compute the SSS sickness benefit you may receive from Social Security System.
If right now you are wondering about the application procedure to avail the SSS Sickness Benefit, don’t worry since this separate guide How to Apply for SSS Sickness Benefit covers that. This time, you may focus mainly on the computation of your SSS sickness benefit.
The basis of the computation is your monthly contributions. So make sure that you have record of your monthly contributions or you can recall the amounts at the back of your mind. Several years back, you need to go to the SSS office to get this real data. But today, you can do it online. You may follow this guide How to Check SSS Contributions Online.
How much do you get for a SSS Sickness Benefit?
The SSS sickness benefit is equivalent to the 90% of your average daily salary. So to directly address this, if you are working at the same company for years now or you are contributing the same SSS monthly contribution for a year or two, most likely, you’ll get the 90% of your regular daily salary.
This means if you are receiving ₱1,500 daily or more, I am sorry to blow your bubble but you are not going to receive that amount. It is because, the highest monthly salary credit is capped at ₱16,000 (although SSS is now eyeing to raise it to ₱20,000). This means that if you divide that to 30 days, the average daily salary credit is capped at ₱533.33.
So, since that’s the highest amount, you are going to receive 90% of that amount which is equal to ₱479.99 (calculated as ₱533.33 x 90%). If your daily salary now is below this, example ₱450 or ₱350, you may directly calculate it by getting the 90% of it.
However, this is just a quick example. There is a proper and official way on how to compute your SSS sickness benefit. To calculate it as accurate as possible, it is important that you have the data of your SSS monthly contributions.
How to compute SSS Sickness Benefit?
1. Determine the semester of sickness.
First off, let’s talk about the quarter of the year before we define the semester of sickness.
There are 4 quarters of the year. Each quarter is composed of 3 consecutive months.
- 1st Quarter: January, February and March
- 2nd Quarter: April, May and June
- 3rd Quarter: July, August and September
- 4th Quarter: October, November and December
Then, there are 4 semesters of the year. The semester refers to 2 consecutive quarters. Which means, 6 consecutive months.
- 1st Semester: 1st and 2nd Quarter
- 2nd Semester: 2nd and 3rd Quarter
- 3rd Semester: 3rd and 4th Quarter
- 4th Semester: 4th and 1st Quarter
To determine the semester of your sickness, meaning you have to check the quarter where it belongs, then followed by the semester.
Example: You got sick on August 2018. It belongs to the 3rd Quarter. The 3rd Quarter belongs to the 2nd Semester. It is not the 3rd Semester because you have to consider the time backwards. So the semester of sickness are the months of September, August, July, June, May and April. As you may recall on the second definition, a semester is composed of 6 consecutive months or 2 quarters.
2. Count 12 months backward starting from the month before the semester of sickness.
So this is the next step. After you have figured out the semester of sickness, you need to count 12 months before that and check your contributions.
Example: Since you got sick on August 2018, the semester of sickness is the 2nd Semester and the first month of the semester is April, you need to count 12 months before April.
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
3. Check the 6 highest monthly salary credits of those 12 months.
Then, determine the 6 highest monthly salary credits.
A Salary Credit is directly related to the salary you are receiving per month. If you are not familiar about it and you may want to check out the SSS Contribution Table 2018.
Example:
- March 2018 – ₱16,000
- February 2018 – ₱16,000
- January 2018 – ₱10,000
- December 2017 – ₱10,000
- November 2017 – ₱10,000
- October 2017 – ₱10,000
- September 2017 – ₱16,000
- August 2017 – ₱16,000
- July 2017 – ₱16,000
- June 2017 – ₱16,000
- May 2017 – ₱15,000
- April 2017 – ₱12,500
4. Add the 6 highest monthly salary credits and divide those by 180 days to get the average daily salary credit.
Example: As a continuation, since your monthly salary credits are all ₱16,000, add those 6 highest months.
Total 6-Monthly Salary Credit: add 6 months highest salary credits.
= ₱16,000 (March)+ ₱16,000 (February) + ₱16,000 (September) + ₱16,000 (August) + ₱16,000 (July) + ₱16,000 (June)
= ₱96,000 total
Average Daily Salary Credit: divide the total 6-month salary credit by 180 days.
= ₱96,000 / 180 days
= ₱533.33 per day
5. Multiply the daily salary credit by 90% to get the sickness benefit amount.
90% of Average Daily Salary Credit:
= ₱533.33 * 90%
= ₱479.99 sickness benefit amount
6. Multiply the sickness benefit amount to the number of days you are sick.
Lets say you have 10 days of sickness, that would be:
= 10 days x ₱479.99 per day
= ₱4,799.90 SSS sickness benefit
Related SSS Guides:
Those were the step by step guide with corresponding example to how to compute SSS sickness benefit. Let us know your thoughts about this in the comment section.
