Frequently asked questions

Gross (бруто) is the salary as written in the contract — the full amount before any deductions. Net (нето) is what actually reaches your account after the employee’s social contributions and the income tax are taken off. In North Macedonia the employer withholds both and pays them over for you, so the money you receive is already net. This calculator starts from gross and shows you the net, with every step in between.

Because in North Macedonia every contribution is inside gross and is borne by the employee — there is no separate employer contribution added on top of the gross figure. So the total labour cost to the employer is simply the gross salary, with no hidden layer above it. This is a real difference from many other countries, where the employer pays additional contributions over and above the gross.

The personal allowance (лично ослободување) is a fixed monthly amount that is exempt from income tax — currently 10.932,00 ден a month. It reduces the tax base, not the tax itself, and it is applied after the contributions are deducted: tax base = gross − contributions − personal allowance. If the contributions and the allowance together reach or exceed gross pay, the tax base is zero and no income tax is due that month.

There are four employee-side contributions that add up to 28% of the base: pension and disability insurance (ПИО) at 19,9%, health insurance at 7,5%, unemployment insurance at 0,1%, and the supplementary contribution for work injury and occupational disease at 0,5%. All four are the employee’s and all are charged on the same contribution base. The per-fund split shown here is the July–December 2026 one; the total has stayed 28% throughout the year.

Contributions are charged on a contribution base that is bounded at both ends. The minimum base is 34.570,00 ден (half of the average gross wage): below it, contributions are still charged on the floor. The maximum base is 1.106.256,00 ден (sixteen times the average gross wage): above it, contributions stop rising, so at high salaries net pay grows faster than gross because the contributions are frozen at the ceiling.

No. The income tax is uniform nationwide — a flat 10% everywhere, with no municipal surcharge, no regional coefficient and no church tax. A salary with the same tax base pays the same tax in Skopje, Bitola or anywhere else, so the result does not depend on where you live or work.

The holiday allowance known as К-15 (регрес за годишен одмор) is a separate annual payment, not part of the monthly net-pay calculation this tool covers. As a general practice it is subject to the 10% income tax and is treated as contribution-exempt — but note that the contribution exemption is standard practice rather than something we can quote verbatim, so treat this as informational and confirm the current rule before relying on it.