ANTE User ManualMinimum Wage Compliance
This screen evaluates every employee's Minimum Wage Earner (MWE) candidacy for a tax year and is where HR signs the declaration that decides how that employee is taxed and reported. A signed MWE declaration is not just a reporting label — starting with the next payroll run computed after it is signed, the employee's statutory minimum wage, plus their holiday pay, overtime pay, night shift differential pay, and hazard pay, are exempt from income tax and stop being withheld at the payslip. If the employee already had payroll posted this year before the declaration was signed, the same signature also corrects the tax over-withheld on those earlier cutoffs — see Correction for Earlier Cutoffs below. A declared MWE is reported on Alphalist Schedule 2; everyone else stays on Schedule 1 with regular withholding. Computation runs continuously in the background and is never final by itself — only a signed declaration decides an employee's tax treatment and Alphalist schedule.
Accessing Minimum Wage Compliance
- Click Manpower in the sidebar
- Open Compliance
- Select Minimum Wage
The breadcrumb at the top of the page reads Manpower › Compliance › Minimum Wage. Set the Tax Year filter at the top to switch years (2020 onward).
Everyone with access to this page can view every employee's evaluation and evidence. The Declare / Re-confirm / Re-declare button that signs a declaration only appears for users who also hold permission to sign minimum wage declarations.
How Candidacy Is Evaluated
For each employee, the system works through a chain to decide whether their pay compares at, above, or below the statutory minimum wage:
- The employee's branch carries a DOLE wage sector — Agricultural or Non-agricultural.
- The branch's region resolves to a DOLE Regional Tripartite Wages and Productivity Board (RTWPB) jurisdiction — most regions map one-to-one, but a few (like the Negros Island Region) have no board of their own and need an explicit override on the branch.
- The employee's payroll group determines how their comparable daily rate is derived (the rate basis), set under Configuration → Payroll Group → Shifting → Working Days Per Week. Four bases exist: a fixed number of days per week, a custom monthly divisor, Auto — which counts the employee's own scheduled work days in the year — and a daily rate written directly on the employment contract, which overrides the payroll group entirely.
- That daily rate is compared against the shipped minimum-wage table for the resolved jurisdiction, sector, and date.
- The comparison yields one of four computed outcomes: the daily rate exactly matches the minimum (MWE candidate), sits above it (Ordinary), sits below it (Below minimum), or the chain above could not be completed (Indeterminate).
Evaluation is computed as of a date within the tax year — for a still-active employee that is today (or December 31 for a past year); for an employee who separated during the year, evaluation stops at their separation date. Computation itself is never saved — it is only ever compared live and shown on this page. What gets saved is the human declaration described below.
Set the branch's wage sector and, if needed, its wage-board override on Settings → Branches.
The Evaluation List
Six count chips summarize the tax year at a glance, and the list below them is sorted in the same urgency order — the employees needing attention first appear first:
| Chip / Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Below minimum | The employee's compared rate is below the statutory minimum — a pay or configuration problem to fix, not something you can declare MWE over. |
| Confirmed — stale | A declaration was signed, but the live evaluation no longer matches what was signed (a raise, a wage order update, or a configuration change since). The filed declaration still stands for reporting until someone re-confirms it. |
| MWE candidate | The live rate exactly matches the minimum wage — nothing declared yet. |
| Indeterminate | One of the steps above could not be completed — see Indeterminate Employees below. |
| Confirmed | A declaration was signed and the live evaluation still matches it. |
| Ordinary | The live rate is above the minimum wage, or the employee was declared Ordinary. |
Each row shows the employee's name, employee code, and branch, a status badge, and an inline evidence summary (rate vs. minimum, wage order number, wage board region, sector, rate basis). Click anywhere on a row to expand it and see the full evidence panel.
The Evidence Panel
Expanding a row opens with How this was computed — the arithmetic behind the status, written out in three lines so it can be checked rather than taken on trust:
- Rate basis — the actual formula that produced the compared daily rate, phrased for the basis in force. An Auto group reads monthly × 12 ÷ scheduled work days in the year; a fixed or custom basis reads monthly ÷ work days per month; a contract daily rate simply states that the payroll group was not used.
- Statutory minimum — the rate being compared against, with the wage order, region, sector, and the date that order took effect.
- Comparison — the verdict and the exact peso gap either side of the minimum.
The figures are the same ones payroll divides by, so the daily rate shown here is the daily rate the employee is actually paid at. Note the comparison is exact to two decimal places with no tolerance: one centavo either way changes the classification, because minimum-wage-earner status requires the rate to equal the minimum, not merely approach it.
Below it sits the same evidence as individual fields:
- Compared daily rate, Minimum daily rate, Compared monthly rate
- Wage order no. and Wage board region
- Sector, Factor used, Rate basis
- Evaluated as of — the date the comparison was computed against
If the employee has an active declaration, a Signed declaration section follows, showing who signed it, when, and the exact rate and wage order that were signed — plus any note the signer added.
Indeterminate Employees
When an employee cannot be evaluated, the panel shows a hint explaining exactly which step failed and how to fix it:
| Reason | Fix |
|---|---|
| No employee data on file | Complete the employee record in HRIS. |
| No branch assigned | Assign a branch on the employee record. |
| Branch has no location | Set the branch's location in Settings → Branches. |
| Wage sector not set on the branch | Set the wage sector in Settings → Branches. The panel offers an Open Branch Settings button for this and the next reason. |
| Region has no wage board mapping | Set a wage-board override on the branch in Settings → Branches. |
| No shipped rate for the jurisdiction | There is no shipped minimum-wage table entry to compare against yet. |
| Payroll group rate basis is incomplete | The group's working-days setting cannot produce a daily rate — for example a custom basis with no days-per-month filled in. Complete it under Configuration → Payroll Group → Shifting; the panel offers an Open Payroll Groups button. An Auto setting is not a cause: it reads the employee's schedule and resolves on its own. |
| No rate on the contract | The employee's contract carries neither a monthly rate nor a custom daily rate, so there is nothing to compare against the minimum. Set the rate on their contract in HRIS — the payroll group is not involved. |
Confirmed — Stale Employees
When a signed declaration no longer matches the live evaluation, the evidence panel adds a drift list — each changed field shown as signed value → live value — under the heading "Live evaluation drifted from the signed declaration." The filed declaration keeps standing for reporting purposes until someone re-confirms it; drift never silently rewrites what was signed.
Signing a Declaration
- Expand or locate the employee's row, then click Declare MWE, Declare Ordinary, Re-confirm, or Re-declare (the label matches the row's current state).
- In the Sign Minimum Wage Declaration dialog, review the evidence being signed — it is the same rate, minimum, wage order, region, sector, factor, and rate basis shown on the row, evaluated as of a specific date.
- Choose Minimum Wage Earner (MWE) — exempt from income tax on the statutory minimum wage, placed on Alphalist Schedule 2 — or Ordinary employee — regular withholding applies, placed on Alphalist Schedule 1.
- Optionally add a note (up to 500 characters).
- Click Sign Declaration.
Declaring MWE is refused when the live evaluation is Below minimum — a tax exemption cannot be asserted on a wage below the statutory minimum — or Indeterminate — there is no evidence yet to sign. Fix the pay or the wage configuration first (see Indeterminate Employees above). Declaring Ordinary is always allowed.
If someone else signs a declaration for the same employee at the same moment, the dialog reports the conflict and asks you to close it and try again.
Re-declaring (including re-confirming a stale row) does not overwrite the previous declaration — it supersedes it. The old declaration is kept, and the new one becomes the active one for reporting.
Correction for Earlier Cutoffs
Declaring MWE mid-year does not only change withholding going forward — it also corrects the cutoffs already posted this year, before the declaration was signed. Choosing Minimum Wage Earner (MWE) in the declaration dialog loads a Correction for earlier cutoffs panel showing exactly what signing will give back, priced the same way the correction is actually booked — the figure shown before you sign is the figure the correction settles.
The panel shows one of three outcomes:
- A refund. Lists the number of earlier cutoffs being corrected, the exempt compensation the correction adds, the tax withheld on those cutoffs this year, and the estimated refund on the next cutoff. Posted payroll is never recomputed, so this never edits a past payslip — the refund instead appears as a "Tax Refund (Minimum Wage Exemption Correction)" line the next time payroll is run for this employee, distinct from the ordinary Tax Adjustment (Annualization) line (see Salary Detail). For a separated employee, the same correction is settled through their final pay instead of a payslip.
- Nothing to refund. The common outcome: most minimum-wage earners sit under both the ₱250,000 annual income tax exemption and the periodic withholding bracket, so no tax was ever withheld on their earlier cutoffs and there is nothing to give back. The panel says so plainly — this is the expected, healthy result, not a sign that something is broken. The same "nothing to correct" note also appears, for a different reason, when every posted cutoff this year already carries the exemption (for example, MWE declared before the year's first payroll ran).
- Cutoffs that cannot be corrected. A cutoff the engine already evaluated as paying above the minimum wage at the time is never retroactively exempted, and is called out separately. A cutoff payroll could not evaluate at all — missing wage or rate configuration — is listed with the reason rather than guessed at; fix the configuration named and re-declare. If the employee's own candidacy cannot be evaluated, no correction is estimated at all.
If the correction estimate cannot be loaded, the dialog says so and still lets you sign — the preview is a courtesy, not a requirement, and the declaration is lawful with or without it.
The refund is bounded twice over: it can never exceed the tax actually withheld, and it can never exceed the statutory minimum-wage rate behind the declaration. It corrects the over-withholding the declaration reveals — it does not pay out more than was taken.
How the Exemption Applies at Payroll
A signed MWE declaration takes effect from the next payroll run computed (or recomputed) after it is signed — it never edits a cutoff that has already been posted. What it can still change is what comes after: as described in Correction for Earlier Cutoffs above, a mid-year declaration also refunds the tax over-withheld on this year's earlier posted cutoffs, on the next cutoff computed (or through final pay for a separated employee). Five pay components are exempt from income tax while the declaration is active and the employee still qualifies: the employee's statutory minimum wage (basic pay), holiday pay, overtime pay, night shift differential pay, and hazard pay. A minimum wage earner with no other taxable income has ₱0 tax deducted from their pay.
A qualifying MWE exemption always wins over an employee's fixed withholding tax setup — if the employee has a fixed amount on file but is a declared, currently qualifying minimum wage earner, payroll withholds nothing rather than falling back to the fixed amount.
Everything else is still taxed normally — taxable allowances, commissions, and benefits above the company's non-taxable pool ceiling are not covered by the exemption. The exemption applies component by component, not to the employee's entire pay.
Every payroll run re-checks the employee's daily rate against the minimum wage in force as of that cutoff's own date, not just once at declaration time. If an employee gets a raise above the minimum wage partway through the year, cutoffs run before the raise stay exempt and cutoffs run after it are taxed normally — signing a declaration does not by itself exempt an employee's whole year.
The hazard pay exemption legally requires a DOLE-certified hazardous work assignment, with the period and amount justified as an attachment to the annual filing. ANTE does not yet track that assignment, so hazard pay is always computed as ₱0 — even for an otherwise fully exempt MWE — rather than claiming an exemption that cannot be substantiated.
Signing or updating a declaration never reopens or edits a cutoff that is already posted — that cutoff's own figures stay exactly as posted, permanently. That is not the same as saying nothing about it can be corrected: as described in Correction for Earlier Cutoffs above, a mid-year declaration refunds this year's over-withheld tax on a later cutoff (or through final pay), without touching the earlier posted record itself. For a cutoff this year's correction could not reach — a cutoff the engine already judged above the minimum wage, one it could not evaluate, or a cutoff posted in an earlier tax year — the Alphalist Report and Alphalist Breakdown still reconstruct the exempt amount from the signed declaration for reporting purposes instead of reading a zero off the unstamped posted row, and flag that reconstruction so HR can verify it before filing.
Declaration History
Click History on any row to see every declaration ever signed for that employee in that tax year, most recent first. Each entry shows the declared status (MWE or Ordinary), a Current or Superseded badge, who signed it and when, the exact rate/minimum/wage order/region/sector that were signed, and (for a superseded entry) when it was superseded. Any note left at signing time is shown as well.
Earlier reporting inferred MWE status automatically from an employee having zero tax withheld. That heuristic is gone from both annual and monthly reporting: MWE membership is now decided only by a signed declaration, so a non-declared, zero-tax employee is reported honestly on Schedule 1 (with real, zero withheld figures) instead of being silently reclassified, and a declared MWE who did have tax withheld — for example on other taxable income, or on a year posted before this exemption took effect — stays on Schedule 2 with the real figures — the Alphalist Report flags that tension rather than hiding it. The Monthly Remittance Return (1601-C) reports the same declaration-driven minimum wage earner pay each month, so the monthly return and the annual filing always agree on who is MWE.
Sign declarations for a tax year's MWE candidates before filing that year's Alphalist — the report stays viewable as a working document either way, but any employee still an unconfirmed MWE candidate is called out in a warning banner on the report.
Related Topics
- Branches — Minimum Wage — where a branch's wage sector and wage-board override are configured
- Payroll Group — where the rate basis (Working Days Per Week, under Shifting) is configured
- Alphalist Report (1604-C) — where declared MWE status decides Schedule 1 vs. Schedule 2 placement
- Alphalist Breakdown — shows the signed declaration's provenance and a Stale chip on the affected employee
- Monthly Remittance Return (1601-C) — reports the same declaration-driven minimum wage earner pay every month
- BIR 2316 Certificates — where a declared MWE's exempt statutory minimum wage and premiums print as items 29-33
- Salary Detail — where the "Tax Refund (Minimum Wage Exemption Correction)" line prints on the employee's next payslip
- Separation Pay — where a separated employee's mid-year correction settles through final pay instead of a payslip