KSA Expat Levy & Work Permit Fee Calculator
Saudi employers pay a monthly labour fee for every expatriate work permit: SAR 800 when expats outnumber Saudi staff, SAR 700 when Saudis equal or exceed expats. Article 40 of the Labour Law makes this an employer-only cost — it cannot be deducted from salaries. This calculator aggregates the levy, the SAR 650/year iqama renewal and SAR 100/year work permit license, applies the December 2025 Industrial License exemption and the small-business GOSI exemption (≤9 employees, in force until March 2027), and shows the break-even months for hiring Saudis to flip the rate from SAR 800 back to SAR 700.
Your Workforce
Your Levy Exposure
Enter your workforce composition to see the monthly fee, annual exposure, and any applicable exemption.
Industrial License exemption applied — no levy is due for any expat work permit.
Hire-vs-Levy Break-Even
- Saudi hires needed to flip rate to SAR 700
- 0
- Annual levy savings from the flip
- 0
- Months until hire cost is recovered by levy savings
- —
Your Saudi headcount already meets or exceeds your expat count — you are on the lower SAR 700 rate.
- Total Annual Exposure
- 0
Indicative figures based on the MHRSD/Qiwa fee schedule current as of May 2026. Final exposure depends on Qiwa invoicing, Nitaqat band and sector-specific decisions. Always verify the monthly fee in your Qiwa account before paying via SADAD.
About the KSA Expat Levy
Saudi Arabia introduced the expat work permit levy in 2017 as part of the Fiscal Balance Programme. The fee was phased in over four years and stabilised in 2020 at SAR 800/month per expat for establishments where expats outnumber Saudi staff, and SAR 700/month per expat where Saudis equal or exceed expats. Under Article 40 of the Labour Law, the employer is the legal payer; deducting the levy from an expatriate worker's salary is prohibited and triggers MHRSD penalties.
Invoices are issued on the Qiwa platform and settled through SADAD with a minimum quarterly billing window (3, 6, 9 or 12 months in advance). Failure to pay suspends iqama renewals, blocks new permit issuance and pushes the firm into a non-compliant Nitaqat band — making this a far costlier liability than the headline SAR 100 difference between the two rate tiers.
Two exemption regimes materially change the picture. In December 2025, HRSD granted a permanent full exemption to establishments holding a valid Industrial License from the Ministry of Industry and Mineral Resources, regardless of headcount. Separately, micro-businesses (≤9 total employees) whose Saudi owner is registered with GOSI continue to benefit from the small-enterprise programme — 2 levy-free expats if only the owner is GOSI-registered, 4 if at least one additional Saudi is also registered. This second programme was extended until March 2027.
For firms outside both exemptions, the operational decision is whether to hire additional Saudis to flip from SAR 800 to SAR 700. Because the delta is SAR 100/month per expat, the savings only justify the hire when the new Saudi salary is modest, when the ratio flip eliminates several months of fines, or when the resulting band upgrade (Medium Green or above) unlocks Qiwa quotas worth more than the levy itself. The break-even output in this calculator quantifies that trade-off for your specific workforce.