Structure, and the agencies that are not the BIR

SSS, PhilHealth and Pag-IBIG when you work for yourself

Three agencies, none of them the BIR, all of them expecting something from you. How firmly each one is actually required, and what the two with citable circulars cost.

What most sources get wrong

Commonly said: That these three work the same way, and that the tables you find are current.
What is actually the case: They differ in a way that matters. SSS registration is a penal offence to refuse. PhilHealth membership is automatic by statute, and the law says non-payment does not forfeit your access to benefits. Pag-IBIG's own statute does not clearly name self-employed people as a mandatory category at all. And a lot of the SSS and PhilHealth tables still circulating predate the 2024 and 2025 circulars that lifted both to their final phase-in levels.; RA 11199; RA 11223 §§5 and 9; RA 9679 §6

Before the numbers, one caveat

TaxKaya does not compute these. Each agency works from a declared income figure of its own, which is not the same as the gross receipts your BIR returns are built on, and nothing in your ledger captures it. Treat this page as what you owe elsewhere and where to sign up, not as a compliance check with due dates the app is watching for you.

The SSS and PhilHealth figures below come from the agencies' own circulars and the statutes behind them. Pag-IBIG's do not appear here at all, for a reason stated in that section.

SSS

Mandatory once your monthly income reaches ₱1,000, and refusing to register is a penal offence.
A self-employed person is defined as someone engaged in a trade, business or occupation with no employer other than themselves, which makes you both the employee and the employer. Penalties for failure or refusal to register may include fines and imprisonment; the specific figures come from the general penal clause via commentary rather than a self-employed-specific provision read word for word.
RA 11199, the Social Security Act of 2018, and its IRR
The rate is 15% of your Monthly Salary Credit, and you pay all of it.
There is no employer share to split it with. The salary credit runs from ₱5,000 to ₱35,000, and you pick the bracket your declared income falls in.
SSS Circular No. 2024-008, effective January 2025
Minimum ₱760 a month, maximum ₱5,280.
The maximum is ₱3,000 of regular contributions plus ₱2,250 to the mandatory provident fund plus ₱30 of employees' compensation. The employees' compensation part is ₱10 a month below a ₱15,000 salary credit and ₱30 at or above it. Voluntary and non-working-spouse members pay the same 15% without the employees' compensation component, so ₱750 to ₱5,250.
SSS Circulars No. 2024-008 and 2024-009
The 15% schedule is the final step, so it should hold through 2026.
No successor circular superseding the 2024 issuances was found. That level is the end of the phase-in written into RA 11199, so it does not need a new circular each year to stay current.
RA 11199 phase-in schedule
Register on Form RS-1, online through My.SSS or in person.
You need the form and a government-issued ID. Contributions are due by the last day of the month following the month they cover.
SSS, self-employed registration

PhilHealth

You are already a member. Membership is automatic for every Filipino citizen.
Not opt-in. The Universal Health Care Act made coverage automatic, and self-employed people are classified as direct contributors, handled as members in the informal economy.
RA 11223 §5
The statute says failing to pay premiums does not forfeit your access to benefits.
This is the part most guides omit, and it changes how you should read every warning about lapsed PhilHealth contributions. Enrolment through a member registration form and payment are still expected in practice. The law simply does not frame non-payment as locking you out of care.
RA 11223 §9
The rate is 5% of monthly income, between a ₱10,000 floor and a ₱100,000 ceiling.
So ₱500 a month at minimum and ₱5,000 at maximum. This is the final step of the annual increases written into the Act, which started at 2.75% in 2019.
PhilHealth Circular No. 2020-0005 (Rev. 1), as implemented by Advisory No. 2025-0002
The 5% rate continues into 2026.
Confirmed through a Philippine Information Agency report of an official PhilHealth statement in May 2026, describing it as the final scheduled adjustment under the Act. No numbered 2026 advisory equivalent to the 2025 one was located, so this rests on the government news report rather than on a citable document number.
PhilHealth statement, reported by the Philippine Information Agency, May 2026
Register online, and pay on whatever cadence suits you.
Through PhilHealth's e-Registration or a local health insurance office. Payment can be monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or annual; the annual January-to-December payment falls due on 31 March. Channels include the member portal, online banking, GCash, Maya, banks and bills-payment counters.
PhilHealth, members in the informal economy
No source was found penalising an individual for not enrolling.
Consistent with §9 above. The Act's penal provisions concern fraudulent claims and provider violations, not individual non-registration.
RA 11223, penal provisions

Pag-IBIG

The rates are not on this page, on purpose. Pag-IBIG's own site blocks automated reads, and no primary circular was read first-hand, so every figure available while this was written came from a summary of a document nobody here opened. The rest of this page cites circulars and statutes directly. Rather than print peso figures at a lower standard than everything around them, this section says what it can support and sends you to the source for the rest.

For current rates, the maximum fund salary, and the registration and payment channels, go to pagibigfund.gov.ph or a Pag-IBIG branch. This section will carry the figures once someone has read the primary issuance.

Whether it is mandatory for a self-employed person is genuinely ambiguous on the statute's own text.
Read directly, RA 9679 §6 names employees covered by SSS or GSIS, Filipinos employed abroad, and non-working spouses, and it leaves the Board of Trustees discretion to extend coverage to other working groups. It does not name the self-employed. Secondary sources describe self-employed coverage as added later through the implementing rules, which was not confirmed against a primary document here. In practice, self-employed sign-up reads as member-initiated rather than actively enforced.
RA 9679 §6, read directly

How to think about the three together

SSS is the one with teeth. It is mandatory by statute, refusing to register is penalised, and it is the one that determines whether you have a pension later.

PhilHealth you already have. The question there is only whether you contribute, and the statute is unusually explicit that not contributing does not cost you access to benefits.

Pag-IBIG is the one where the legal obligation is least clear for a self-employed person, and also the cheapest of the three. People generally join it for the loan access rather than because they were compelled to. Get the current figures from Pag-IBIG directly.

Still unsettled

Nobody has answered these. Where the answer would change what you owe, that is a question for a professional or a formal BIR ruling request, not for a guide page.

What exactly happens to a self-employed person who never registers with SSS or Pag-IBIG?

What is known: RA 11199 makes failure or refusal to register a penal offence, and SSS confirms that fines and imprisonment apply.
Where it stops: Neither agency's penalty clause was confirmed to read for a self-employed individual specifically rather than for an employer. Read the cited peso figures and prison terms as indicative of the general penal clause, not as a schedule someone has applied to a freelancer.

The trips this involves

Sources

Checked against BIR rules on Aug 6, 2026

Knowing the rule is half of it. Knowing what you owe under it, before the deadline, is the other half.

Work out what you file

Practical guidance, not legal or tax advice. Every claim above names what it rests on, and where a claim rests on secondary reporting rather than a primary text, it says so. Rules move; check the review date before relying on a figure.