Lesson 4 — GCC nationals contribute at home, and your share is capped
A Saudi, Kuwaiti, Bahraini, Omani or Qatari employee on your UAE payroll is not a GPSSA case at all, and treating them as one is a different kind of mistake from getting a rate wrong.
The obligation. Under the Insurance Protection Extension Scheme, a GCC national working in the UAE is insured under their home country's scheme, at that country's rates, not under UAE law. Your role is to withhold and remit at rates set somewhere else, on a calendar set somewhere else. The scheme exists so that a Gulf national's service abroad still counts at home, which is why the home authority ultimately asks for the money.
| Home country | Employer rate | Employee rate | You pay after the 15% cap | The employee bears | Total to the home scheme |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bahrain | 17% | 7% | 15% | 9% | 24% |
| Kuwait | 11% | 7.5% | 11% | 7.5% | 18.5% |
| Oman | 11% | 7.5% | 11% | 7.5% | 18.5% |
| Qatar | 14% | 7% | 14% | 7% | 21% |
| Saudi Arabia | 9% | 9% | 9% | 9% | 18% |
Those are the rates as published by GPSSA, read on 18 August 2026, with Bahrain's figures being its pension branch. Treat them as a starting point rather than as an authority: the page carries no "last updated" date, and several entries carry effective dates of their own. Verify the current rate with the home country's authority before you rely on it for a live payroll, and write down the date you checked.
The cap, and who absorbs the excess. Your contribution may not exceed the share you would pay for a UAE national. The module enforces that with the GCC employer share cap setting in Settings › Payroll, default 15%. Where the home scheme charges the employer more than the cap, the difference is deducted from the employee — the home scheme still receives its full total, and you never pay more than the cap. On the rates above, Bahrain is the only one of the five whose employer rate crosses the cap today.
The worked example. A Bahraini employee on a salary of AED 20,000.
| Line | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Employer share before the cap | 17% | AED 3,400 |
| Employer share after the cap | 15% | AED 3,000 |
| Employee, home rate | 7% | AED 1,400 |
| Employee, the capped excess | 2% | AED 400 |
| Total to the Bahraini scheme | 24% | AED 4,800 |
The Bahraini scheme receives its full AED 4,800. You pay AED 3,000 rather than AED 3,400, and the AED 400 difference appears as a second deduction on the employee's payslip. Explain that line before the first payslip carries it, because from the employee's side it looks like an unexplained extra deduction and from your side it is the law working exactly as written.
The click path. Set the employee's Social Security Scheme to GCC — for these five nationalities it is already the default — and confirm the nationality is set on the record. The rates themselves live under Payroll › Configuration › GCC Social Rates, shipped as a dated snapshot rather than as constants, which is the subject of the next lesson.
The failure mode. If no rate is configured for an employee's nationality, payroll stops with an error. That is deliberate, and it is the right behaviour: a payslip that quietly contributes nothing to someone's home pension hides the problem until their home authority asks for the money, by which point the sum is years of arrears and the employee has left. A stopped payslip costs you an afternoon. A silent zero costs a person their contribution record.