EP and S Pass Salary Increases from January 2027: Budgeting and Compliance Planning for Singapore Employers

If your company employs Employment Pass or S Pass holders, the payroll line you budgeted for 2026 is not the one you will be paying in 2027 and 2028. At the Committee of Supply debates on 3 March 2026, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) confirmed that the minimum qualifying salaries for both passes will rise again from 1 January 2027 for new applications, and from 1 January 2028 for renewals. For most Singapore companies this is not a distant policy footnote. It is a payroll cost increase that needs to be modelled, budgeted and flagged to your accountant or corporate secretary well before the renewal notices start arriving.

Most of what has been written about this change so far is aimed at HR teams managing the pass application itself: eligibility criteria, COMPASS scoring, and paperwork. That is useful, but it is not the whole picture for a director or finance manager. The more pressing question for your finance and corporate secretarial function is different: which existing EP and S Pass holders will fall below the new floor at renewal, what the salary top-up does to your annual wage bill, and what should be flagged now, rather than in the anxious weeks before a pass expires.

This article sets out the confirmed 2027 figures, explains the two-stage timeline employers must track, and gives a practical framework for budgeting, headcount cost forecasting and what to raise with your accountant or corporate secretary ahead of the change.

What Changed at Committee of Supply 2026

MOM’s Committee of Supply factsheet on foreign workforce policy, published alongside the 3 March 2026 debate, confirmed that the Employment Pass and S Pass qualifying salaries will be revised upward across the board. The stated rationale is the regular benchmarking exercise MOM runs against local wages: the EP qualifying salary is benchmarked to the top one-third of local PMET wages, and the S Pass qualifying salary to the top one-third of local Associate Professional and Technician (APT) wages.

Two things matter for planning purposes. First, MOM has built in a lead time: the new floors apply to new applications from 1 January 2027, and only to renewals from 1 January 2028. Second, this is not a one-off adjustment. The S Pass minimum qualifying salary is expected to reach approximately S$4,000 to S$4,500 by around 2030, so employers who budget only for the 2027 step will likely need to repeat this exercise within a few years.

The New EP and S Pass Salary Thresholds at a Glance

The table below sets out the confirmed minimum qualifying salaries, current (2026) versus new (from January 2027), by sector and by the top age band. These are floors only; the qualifying salary for any individual candidate increases progressively with age from 23 and below up to the mid-40s figure shown.

For context, this builds on an earlier step: the S Pass minimum for most sectors was already raised to S$3,300 in September 2026, as covered in our earlier piece on the S Pass qualifying salary rise to S$3,300. The January 2027 change is the next, larger step on top of that, and it is the one most companies have not yet built into their multi-year budgets.

Two Effective Dates Employers Must Track

The single most important operational detail in this announcement is that it does not take effect on one date. It takes effect on two, and mixing them up is the most common planning error we expect to see.

New applications from 1 January 2027

Any EP or S Pass application submitted on or after 1 January 2027, whether for a brand new hire or for converting an existing work pass holder to an EP or S Pass, must meet the new qualifying salary floor. If your company is planning to bring on a foreign professional or mid-skilled hire in the second half of 2026, there may be a narrow window to submit under the current thresholds, and this is worth discussing with whoever manages your work pass applications before the year end. For background on how conversions work, see our guide to converting a Work Permit holder to an S Pass or Employment Pass.

Renewals from 1 January 2028: the one your finance team must audit now

This is the date that matters most for companies with an existing EP or S Pass headcount. Any renewal application for a pass expiring on or after 1 January 2028 must meet the new floor. Because EP and S Pass renewals are typically processed in the months before expiry, this effectively means that pass holders whose current passes expire from around the third quarter of 2027 onwards should have their salary reviewed well ahead of time, not left until the renewal form is due.

The practical risk sits with employees currently between the old and new floors: an EP holder on S$5,700 a month in a non-financial-services role clears the current S$5,600 floor, but sits below the new S$6,000 floor and will need a pay adjustment before the renewal can be filed. Multiply that gap across a headcount of EP and S Pass holders, and the aggregate cost is not trivial.

Building the 2027/2028 Payroll Increase into Your Budget

For a finance manager or director, the practical task is less about immigration process and more about running a structured cost exercise now, while there is still runway before the deadlines bite.

Step 1: Pull your EP and S Pass headcount and salary register

Start with a full list of current EP and S Pass holders: fixed monthly salary, sector classification (ordinary versus Financial Services), age band, and pass expiry date. This is usually available from your payroll system and your corporate secretary’s pass register. Anyone between the current and new floor for their sector and age band should be flagged immediately.

Step 2: Flag renewals falling due in 2027 and 2028

Sort the register by pass expiry date. Passes expiring before 1 January 2028 can generally still renew under current thresholds; passes expiring from 1 January 2028 onwards must meet the new floor. Any holder below the new floor whose renewal falls in that window needs a salary review scheduled well ahead of the filing date, not once it becomes urgent.

Step 3: Model the incremental cost across the whole affected headcount

A salary top-up from S$5,600 to S$6,000 for a single EP holder is a minimum increase of S$4,800 a year. For a company with, say, fifteen EP holders near the current floor, that is a minimum incremental payroll cost of S$72,000 a year from the point their renewals fall due, before any knock-on adjustments to maintain internal pay parity. This figure belongs in your 2027 and 2028 budget forecasts now, not as a surprise variance when it lands.

How This Interacts with CPF Contributions and Wage Cost Forecasting

It is worth being precise here, because this is a point of confusion we see often. CPF contributions apply only to Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents; they do not apply to EP or S Pass holders, who are foreigners for CPF purposes. The salary increase itself does not create a new CPF liability for those individuals, but it still needs to sit alongside your CPF cost planning for two reasons.

First, if an EP or S Pass holder later obtains Permanent Residency, their salary from that point becomes CPF-liable, so a higher qualifying salary floor feeds directly into a higher CPF cost base the moment that conversion happens. Second, most Singapore companies forecast their total wage bill, local and foreign, together each budget cycle. The CPF Ordinary Wage ceiling completed its own scheduled increase to S$8,000 from 1 January 2026, already raising the CPF-liable cost of local and PR staff. Finance teams building a 2027/2028 headcount cost model should treat the EP/S Pass floor increase and the CPF ceiling as concurrent inputs to the same wage bill forecast, rather than looking at foreign and local payroll costs in isolation. Our Singapore Payroll and CPF Guide and our note on Senior Worker CPF contribution rate changes set out the current CPF rate structure this should be modelled against.

S Pass employers should also remember the qualifying salary is only half the cost of employing an S Pass holder: the monthly Foreign Worker Levy sits on top, unaffected by this announcement, but still belongs in the same cost model when budgeting headcount for 2027 onwards.

What to Flag to Your Accountant or Corporate Secretary Now

A few items are worth raising proactively:

• A list of EP and S Pass holders whose pass expires from 1 January 2028 onwards, with current salary against the applicable new floor for their sector and age band.
• Whether any of those individuals also hold a directorship or shareholding, which can affect how a salary adjustment interacts with your management accounts and related-party disclosures.
• Whether any planned new hires in late 2026 should be timed to submit before 31 December 2026 to be assessed under the current thresholds, subject to confirming the correct assessment basis with whoever manages your work pass filings.
• An updated 2027 and 2028 budget line for the incremental payroll cost, so it appears in board papers and cash flow forecasts rather than surfacing as an unplanned variance.
• Whether any EP holders affected by the change are also mid-way through a Permanent Residency application, given the interaction with future CPF liability described above.

Companies with Employment Pass holders brought in under an intra-corporate transfer arrangement should also review how the new floor interacts with the job advertising exemption; see our guide on Employment Pass for Intra-Corporate Transferees and the FTA exemption.

A Practical Compliance Checklist for Directors and Finance Managers

Before the year end, a director or finance manager overseeing a Singapore company with foreign pass holders should be able to answer the following:

1. Do we have a complete, current register of EP and S Pass holders, their salaries, sectors and pass expiry dates?
2. Which pass holders fall below the new January 2027 floor for their sector and age band?
3. Of those, which have a renewal falling due from 1 January 2028 onwards, and has a salary review been scheduled ahead of that date?
4. Has the incremental payroll cost been built into the 2027 and 2028 budget, and communicated to the board?
5. Has our corporate secretary or accountant been briefed on the affected headcount, so it can be reflected in management accounts and cash flow planning?

If your S Pass headcount is affected, it is worth revisiting the underlying eligibility, levy and quota mechanics, which have not changed even though the salary floor has. Our Singapore S Pass 2026 guide to eligibility, quota, levy and applications remains the reference point.

Getting Help with Payroll and Compliance Planning

Confirming exact figures is straightforward: MOM’s Employment Pass eligibility page and S Pass eligibility page set out the qualifying salary criteria in full, and both will be updated as the January 2027 change takes effect. Building the change into a budget, payroll forecast and corporate secretarial record is where a corporate services provider adds the most value.

If your HR function needs the pass-application side of this change covered, our sister company has published a detailed guide on the same MOM announcement from an HR planning angle: 2027 EP and S Pass Salary Increases: What Singapore HR Teams Should Plan For Now. On the finance and corporate secretarial side, Raffles Corporate Services can help you build the affected headcount into your annual budget, reconcile it against your payroll and CPF obligations, and keep your statutory records aligned as renewals fall due.

The Editorial Team, Raffles Corporate Services