Am I a contract employer or temporary employer?

As an employer you take care of your employees’ pension cover. You can do this in two ways. Depending on your situation you can do this as a contract employer or temporary employer. When it comes to pensions you are either one or the other.

Do I need TyEL insurance?

As a contract employer you need employees’ pension insurance, i.e. TyEL insurance.

As a temporary employer you do not need TyEL insurance. It’s enough if you take care of pension insurance through TyEL contributions.

Contract employer – wages more than EUR 9,822 in six months in 2024.

As a contract employer you arrange your employees’ pension cover and require TyEL insurance when

you have at least one employee with a permanent employment contract, or
the wages or salaries paid to your employees over six months exceed 9,822 Eur in 2024 (9,348 in 2023).

Your employees accrue pension on all of the work they do between the ages of 17 and 67. Earnings-related pension accrues when your employee is at least 17 and has not yet turned 68.

It is your duty to arrange pension cover for your employee. Take out TyEL insurance and pay the TyEL insurance contribution based on the wages you pay to the employee.

If you already have TyEL insurance you can insure your temporary employee under the same insurance.

As a contract employer, your TyEL contribution falls due on the last day of the month following the payment of the wages or salaries. You can also defer the due date of the contribution by one month, but it will then be slightly higher.

You, as the employer, and your employees pay the insurance contribution together. You collect the employee’s share of the contribution from the employee’s pay and remit the total contribution to us. You can also authorise an accounting firm to do this on your behalf. Based on the earnings payment reports made to the Incomes Register, we will calculate the contribution at the start of the month following the payroll date.

In 2024, the basic TyEL contribution is 25.12% (25.30 % in 2023). A company-specific administrative cost will be added to basic fee. Your TyEL contribution is reduced by the customer bonus you receive once a year. Ilmarinen’s administrative cost will decrease 20% in 2024

For small contract employers, Ilmarinen's earnings-related pension insurance contribution is no more than 25.32 per cent of the payroll, when administrative costs are taken into account. A person who paid under EUR 2,251,500 in wages in 2022 is considered a small employer.

Temporary employer – wages less than EUR 9,348 in six months

As a temporary employer, you arrange for the pension cover of your employees, but you do not need to take out TyEL insurance. Just pay the TyEL contribution.

Employees accrue pension:

if the employee is at least 17 and has not yet turned 68 or
the monthly wages exceed EUR 65.26 in 2023.

You are a temporary employer when three conditions are met:

you pay wages to an employee under an employment contract
you do not have one or more permanent employees
the wages you have paid to employees under an employment contract over six months total less than EUR 9,348 in 2023.

If you exceed that payroll amount or if you employ employees continuously, you are a contract employer. In that case, take out TyEL insurance.

The TyEL contribution rate for temporary employers is 26.12 per cent of wages in 2024 (26.20 % in 2023).The contribution for temporary employers is the same in all pension companies.

As a temporary employer, your TyEL contribution falls due on the last day of the month following the payment of the wages or salaries. The contribution is based on the earnings data that you have submitted to the Incomes Register through an earnings payment report. Usually, depending on the reporting channel, Ilmarinen sends an invoice within a few days of when you have submitted an earnings payment report to the Incomes Register.

You, as the employer, and your employees pay the insurance contribution together. You collect the employee’s share of the contribution from the employee’s pay and remit the total contribution to us. You can also authorise an accounting firm to do this on your behalf.

Employee’s share of contribution, % of pay in 2023 and 2024

Employee 17–52 years old 7.15%
Employee 53–62 years old 8.65%
Employee that has turned 63-68 years old 7.15%

As a temporary employer you do not receive client bonuses as contract employers do.

Households as employers

When you hire a cleaner, painter, child care provider or some other helper to work at your home or cottage, in your yard or your forest, you become a household employer. Take care of your employees’ pension cover just like other employers.

Report earnings data to the Incomes Register

Whether you are a contract employer or temporary employer, report all the salaries and wages you have paid to the Incomes Register. As a general rule, the report should be submitted within five days of payment.

For filing the reports, contract employers require the TyEL insurance number, i.e. pension policy number. So take out TyEL insurance well before you report earnings payment data, no later than on the day preceding the reporting date, however.

Temporary employers do not have a TyEL insurance number, i.e. pension policy number. In the earnings payment report’s payer’s details mention that you are a temporary employer and select Ilmarinen as the pension company. Our pension insurance company code is 46.

For example, an accounting firm can report a temporary employer’s earnings data to the Incomes Register through the technical interface. This means that the earnings payment report must contain a pension policy number, which you can get by calling our customer service.

Employer’s payroll service

As a temporary employer, you can conveniently calculate wages and arrange your employees’ pension cover in the Palkka.fi or Oima service. These services send the earnings payment data to the Incomes Register.

If the person you hire is self-employed, he or she will take care of his or her own earnings-related pension and other statutory contributions. If the person works for a company, the company will take care of the contributions. Check this before you hire an employee, for example in the Business Information System (ytj.fi). If a self-employed person or company are not part of the Prepayment Register, you have to take care of the withholding tax.

Are you considering taking out TyEL insurance? Become our customer and take out insurance with Ilmarinen.