Hiring Your First Secretary: Employer Obligations

You just became an employer, in the BIR's eyes and three agencies'

Hiring one clinic secretary flips you from a solo professional into an employer with recurring duties in four places: the BIR, the Social Security System (SSS), PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG. None of it is hard on its own, but it's monthly, and it starts immediately. The first step with the BIR is to update your registration to add withholding tax on compensation as a tax type, using BIR Form 1905, and to make sure your new hire has a TIN.

Withholding income tax on your employee's pay

As an employer you withhold income tax from your employee's salary using the BIR's compensation withholding table, remit it monthly on Form 1601-C by the 10th of the following month, file an annual return (Form 1604-C) by January 31, and give your employee a BIR Form 2316 (their certificate of compensation and tax withheld) by January 31. For a modestly paid secretary, the withheld income tax is often small or even zero, because the first ₱250,000 of annual compensation is untaxed, but the returns still have to be filed.

The three mandatory contributions

On top of salary, you enroll your employee in and remit to SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG, splitting each with them. You deduct the employee's share from their pay and add the employer's share from your pocket. The 2026 figures

SSS total is 15% of the monthly salary credit (10% employer, 5% employee); PhilHealth is 5% split evenly; Pag-IBIG maxes at ₱200 employee plus ₱200 employer. Rates are set by agency circulars and change, so confirm the current year's figures.

A worked example: a secretary at ₱18,000 a month

The monthly rhythm you're signing up for

The real change hiring brings isn't any single form, it's the cadence. Every month you compute and remit the three contributions and the compensation withholding, each on its own schedule, and once a year you file the annual compensation return and hand your employee their BIR Form 2316. Miss a remittance and the agencies, like the BIR, add their own penalties and interest, so the discipline that matters is calendar discipline. Many solo doctors handle exactly one employee comfortably; what catches them out is not the difficulty but the regularity, a set of small monthly tasks that can't lapse.

Don't forget the 13th-month pay and the wage floor

Two labor rules sit alongside the tax and contribution duties. Every rank-and-file employee is entitled to a 13th-month pay, at least one-twelfth of the basic salary they earned during the year, payable on or before December 24. And the salary itself has to meet your region's minimum wage, which is set locally and updated from time to time. Neither is a tax, but both are part of being an employer.

The one-time setup before the monthly rhythm starts

Before any of the recurring filing begins, there's a short burst of one-time setup, and doing it properly at the start prevents headaches later. Your employee needs a TIN if they don't have one, and they need to be registered as a member and reported as your employee with SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG, so their contributions are credited to the right person. You'll also want a basic payroll record from day one, showing gross pay, each deduction, and the employer shares, because that record is what your monthly remittances and year-end BIR Form 2316 are built from. Set up cleanly once, and the monthly cycle becomes routine data entry rather than a recurring scramble to reconstruct the numbers.

Frequently asked questions