PERKESO Lindung 24 Jam (SKBBK): what Malaysian employers deduct, and why the maximum is RM44.65
From 1 June 2026, PERKESO extended cover to accidents that happen outside working hours through Skim Kemalangan Bukan Bencana Kerja (SKBBK), marketed as “Lindung 24 Jam”. It is a new line on the payslip, it is paid entirely by the employee, and — the part a percentage-based implementation gets wrong — the amount comes from a published banded table, not a flat percentage. This guide sets out what the scheme is, who it applies to after the Cabinet decision of 8 July 2026, how the contribution is worked out, what it does and does not do to PCB, and how you remit it while PERKESO’s file format catches up. Figures below are as at July 2026; scope and rates are PERKESO’s to set, so confirm the current position with them.
Want the number instead of the theory? Try the free PCB calculator.
What is PERKESO Lindung 24 Jam (SKBBK)?
Lindung 24 Jam is PERKESO’s branding for Skim Kemalangan Bukan Bencana Kerja (SKBBK), a scheme that extends protection to accidents that are not work-related — the 24-hour cover in the name. It was introduced under the Employees’ Social Security (Amendment) Act 2026 and took effect on 1 June 2026.
Existing SOCSO cover under the Employment Injury Scheme is tied to accidents arising out of and in the course of employment, including the commute. SKBBK is the piece that sits outside that boundary. It is a sub-scheme of SOCSO rather than a separate registration, which is why it only arises where an employee already has a SOCSO relationship with the employer.
The single most important operational fact is who pays. SKBBK is employee-borne: there is no employer share. Unlike EPF, SOCSO and EIS, where the employer adds its own contribution on top, here the employer deducts the amount from the employee’s pay and remits it. It reduces the employee’s net pay and adds nothing to your payroll cost — though the remittance duty, and the liability until you remit, are still yours.
As at July 2026 the scheme is in its first phase. PERKESO has published a phase roadmap in which the headline contribution rate is 0.75% in the first two years, stepping to 1.0% in years three to five and 1.25% from year six. Treat those later rates as a signposted direction rather than a figure to calculate with today — see the section on the banded table below for why the headline rate is not what you actually deduct.
Do I have to deduct Lindung 24 Jam for my Malaysian staff?
Yes, unless the employee opts out. As at July 2026, following the Cabinet decision of 8 July 2026, a Malaysian employee is covered by default and a contribution is due for them, with a right to opt out during the window running 13 July to 31 August 2026. It remains mandatory for foreign workers, who have no election to make. Either way, it only arises where there is a SOCSO relationship. Confirm the current position with PERKESO — the scope is theirs to set, and it has already changed once since the scheme commenced.
That Cabinet decision changed the scheme’s shape after it had already commenced, which is why guidance published before 8 July 2026 — including some still circulating — describes a blanket mandatory scheme. If you are reading an article, check its date before you act on it.
For foreign workers the position is unchanged: SKBBK applies, and there is no election for the employee or the employer to make. For Malaysian citizens the deduction depends on the employee’s own position under PERKESO’s opt-out mechanism. Whether a particular employee should opt out, and what the deadline means for someone hired after the window, are questions for PERKESO and the employee — not for a software vendor and not for this guide.
One boundary is worth stating plainly because it catches people out: SKBBK rides on SOCSO participation. If an employee has no SOCSO relationship with you, no SKBBK arises, and that holds for foreign workers too. Confirm coverage against PERKESO’s current guidance rather than assuming a blanket rule, because SOCSO coverage rules for foreign workers and certain age groups have been revised over time.
How much is the Lindung 24 Jam contribution?
The amount is read off PERKESO’s official Jadual Caruman, a banded wage-bracket table, not calculated as a percentage of wages. As at July 2026 the phase-1 table runs to 64 wage bands plus a row for wages above RM6,000, and the highest contribution on it is RM44.65 per month.
The bands are defined in the Jadual by the wording “melebihi X tetapi tidak melebihi Y” — above X but not exceeding Y — so each band edge belongs to the lower band. A wage of exactly RM4,000 sits in the band ending at RM4,000; one sen more moves into the next band up.
The extract below is reproduced from the official Jadual (the employee SKBBK column) and is the same table our payroll engine uses. It is a sample of the published bands, not the whole schedule — for a wage that is not shown here, read the figure off PERKESO’s Jadual itself rather than interpolating between these rows, because the published amounts do not follow a clean formula.
The wage basis is the employee’s normal monthly wage — the same basis SOCSO and EIS use, so bonuses are excluded — and, as with those schemes, wages above RM6,000 a month all take the top row. Confirm the current schedule with PERKESO before you rely on any figure here.
| Monthly wage band | Employee contribution | Employer contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Wages up to RM30 | RM0.20 | Nil |
| Above RM140, up to RM200 | RM1.25 | Nil |
| Above RM900, up to RM1,000 | RM7.15 | Nil |
| Above RM1,900, up to RM2,000 | RM14.65 | Nil |
| Above RM2,900, up to RM3,000 | RM22.15 | Nil |
| Above RM3,900, up to RM4,000 | RM29.65 | Nil |
| Above RM4,900, up to RM5,000 | RM37.15 | Nil |
| Above RM5,900, up to RM6,000 | RM44.65 | Nil |
| Above RM6,000 | RM44.65 | Nil |
A selected extract from the phase-1 Jadual Caruman published by PERKESO, which contains 64 wage bands plus the “melebihi RM6,000” row; the intermediate bands are omitted here for length, not because they differ in kind. Employer contribution is nil throughout — SKBBK is employee-borne. Band edges are upper-inclusive. Later phases (1.0% from year three, 1.25% from year six) will each carry their own published schedule, so do not scale these amounts. Always read the current Jadual from PERKESO before running payroll.
Why is my SKBBK figure RM44.65 and not RM45.00?
Because the published table is the rule, and 0.75% is only a description of it. A flat-percentage reading — 0.75% of the RM6,000 ceiling — gives RM45.00. The official Jadual’s top row is RM44.65, as at July 2026, so the shortcut is 35 sen too much.
The reason for the gap is that the Jadual is a published table of exact amounts, and those amounts do not follow a clean percentage formula. The 0.75% figure describes the scheme; it does not reproduce the table. Two examples from the published schedule: the band ending at RM6,000 shows RM44.65, where 0.75% of the RM6,000 ceiling would give RM45.00; and the band from above RM140 to RM200 shows RM1.25, which no single percentage-and-rounding rule derives from that band. That is precisely why the amount has to be read off PERKESO's Jadual for the employee's wage band rather than computed from a rate — and why a payroll system that implements the scheme as a percentage will disagree with the published figure.
So an implementation that multiplies the actual wage by 0.75% drifts from the published amount at almost every wage — by up to about 40 sen (0.75% of RM700 is RM5.25, where the Jadual says RM4.85) and by 35 sen over at the ceiling. Every month, for every affected employee.
Forty sen sounds trivial until you consider what it is: a statutory deduction from someone’s pay that does not match what PERKESO published. Over a year and a headcount it is also a reconciliation difference between your payroll register and what PERKESO expects you to remit, which is the kind of small permanent discrepancy that is tedious to chase later.
This is why our engine stores the Jadual verbatim rather than computing a percentage: the table is the source of truth, and the phase roadmap is a reason not to derive amounts at all. When PERKESO publishes the phase-2 schedule, the right response is to add that table — not to multiply this one by 1.0/0.75.
Does Lindung 24 Jam change my employees’ PCB?
In Taokeh it does not: SKBBK is treated as a deduction that reduces net pay only, and PCB is computed exactly as it would be without it. That is a deliberate conservative choice, not an oversight — as at July 2026, LHDN has published nothing on whether SKBBK counts toward the SOCSO/EIS relief in the MTD calculation.
The question is a narrow one. LHDN’s MTD computation allows a relief for SOCSO and EIS contributions, capped at RM350 a year (as at July 2026, source: LHDN). SKBBK is a PERKESO contribution and a SOCSO sub-scheme, so it is a fair question whether it falls inside that relief. We have not found a published LHDN position either way, and we are not going to infer one.
Faced with an unanswered question, there are two ways to be wrong. Include SKBBK in the relief and, if LHDN says it does not qualify, you have under-withheld tax from your employees all year — a shortfall that surfaces at filing. Exclude it and, if LHDN says it does qualify, you have withheld a little more tax than strictly necessary, which the employee recovers on assessment. We took the second path.
The practical size of it: the relief is capped at RM350 a year across SOCSO and EIS combined. For employees whose own SOCSO and EIS contributions already exhaust that cap on their own, whether SKBBK qualifies makes no difference at all; for the rest, the difference in monthly PCB is small. If LHDN publishes a position, this treatment should be revisited — and we will say so here when it does. What we will not do is tell you how your business should treat it; that is a question for LHDN and your own tax adviser.
How do I remit SKBBK to PERKESO?
You deduct it from the employee and remit it alongside your SOCSO and EIS contributions, on the same monthly cycle and deadline. As at July 2026 there is a transitional wrinkle: SKBBK does not yet have a place in the contribution upload file, so the amount is entered into PERKESO’s ASSIST portal separately.
PERKESO has indicated that the combined contribution text file will gain a field for the SKBBK employee share in a version 2.0 layout, and that the existing version 1.0 format remains valid until 30 September 2026. At the time of writing the version 2.0 specification has not been published, so we do not generate it — we will not guess a fixed-width layout for a live contribution file. Until it appears, the SKBBK column is keyed into ASSIST by hand from your contribution summary.
That is an honest gap rather than a missing feature, and it is worth knowing about before your first run under the scheme so the manual step is planned rather than discovered. Check PERKESO’s circulars for the version 2.0 layout as the September date approaches, since the file format is theirs to publish and the dates above are as at July 2026.
In your books, the SKBBK you have deducted is a liability from the moment you withhold it until you pay it over, exactly like the employee shares of SOCSO and EIS. Keeping it on the ledger as its own amount is what makes your monthly remittance reconcile against what you actually deducted.
How does Taokeh handle Lindung 24 Jam in payroll?
Taokeh, the Malaysian SME accounting software by Enya Venture, calculates SKBBK on every payroll run from PERKESO’s published banded table, shows it as its own payslip line, and posts it to the ledger as a payroll liability until you remit it — so the amount on the payslip, in your books and in your remittance all come from one source.
Foreign workers with a SOCSO relationship are always deducted. For Malaysian employees the SKBBK line stays off until you tick “SKBBK — Lindung 24 Jam” on that employee’s record: Taokeh will not reduce someone’s net pay on an assumption. Read that against how the scheme works, because the two defaults point opposite ways — PERKESO’s mechanism is an opt-out, so a Malaysian who does not opt out is covered and a contribution is due for them, while an employee left unticked in Taokeh is not deducted. Confirm each Malaysian employee’s position with them and set the flag before the window closes on 31 August 2026.
PCB is left untouched, for the reason set out above. The payslip shows SKBBK on its own line, so an employee can see exactly what the new deduction is rather than finding their net pay quietly lower. The contribution summary for the period carries an SKBBK column you can key into ASSIST while the version 2.0 file layout is pending, and the payroll run reminds you of that manual step whenever a run includes SKBBK.
Because payroll sits on the same double-entry ledger as the rest of your accounting, the deduction, the liability and the cash you eventually pay PERKESO reconcile from one set of records. Figures and scheme rules in Taokeh are kept against PERKESO’s published schedule and re-checked when it changes; they are not a substitute for confirming your own position with PERKESO.
Frequently asked questions
What is Lindung 24 Jam?
Lindung 24 Jam is PERKESO’s name for Skim Kemalangan Bukan Bencana Kerja (SKBBK), which extends cover to accidents that are not work-related — 24-hour protection rather than only during work and the commute. It was introduced under the Employees’ Social Security (Amendment) Act 2026 and took effect on 1 June 2026. It is a SOCSO sub-scheme, so it only arises where an employee already has a SOCSO relationship.
Do I deduct Lindung 24 Jam for my Malaysian staff?
As at July 2026, following the Cabinet decision of 8 July 2026, a Malaysian employee is covered by default with a right to opt out during the 13 July to 31 August 2026 window — so unless they opt out, a contribution is due for them; it remains mandatory for foreign workers with a SOCSO relationship. Whether a particular employee opts out is between them and PERKESO. Confirm the current scope with PERKESO — it is theirs to set, and it has already changed once since the scheme commenced.
Why is my SKBBK figure RM44.65 and not RM45.00?
Because the contribution is read from PERKESO’s banded Jadual Caruman, not calculated as 0.75% of wages. The Jadual’s top row is RM44.65 (as at July 2026), while a flat 0.75% × RM6,000 gives RM45.00. The published table is the rule and the percentage only describes it: the printed amounts do not follow a clean percentage-and-rounding formula, so they cannot be reliably derived. Read the exact figure for your wage band off PERKESO’s Jadual.
Does the employer pay a share of SKBBK?
No. SKBBK is employee-borne — there is no employer contribution, unlike EPF, SOCSO and EIS where the employer adds its own share. You deduct it from the employee’s pay and remit it, so it reduces their net pay and adds nothing to your payroll cost. The duty to deduct, hold and remit it correctly is still the employer’s.
Does SKBBK change PCB or count toward the RM350 SOCSO/EIS relief?
In Taokeh, no — SKBBK reduces net pay only and PCB is computed as if it were not there. As at July 2026 we have found no published LHDN position on whether SKBBK falls within the SOCSO/EIS relief in the MTD calculation, so we take the conservative treatment, which withholds slightly more tax rather than less. If LHDN publishes a position, this should be revisited. Ask LHDN or your tax adviser about your own situation.
What if an employee opts out after I have already run payroll?
How an opt-out is treated once a contribution has been deducted and remitted — including any refund or adjustment — is PERKESO’s process, not something payroll software can decide; raise it with PERKESO. On the software side, changing an employee’s enrolment in Taokeh affects future runs; a finalised run is corrected the same way as any other payroll error, and the SKBBK you have deducted sits on the ledger as a liability so the adjustment is visible.
Is SKBBK included in the SOCSO and EIS contribution file I upload to ASSIST?
Not yet. As at July 2026, PERKESO has not published the version 2.0 file layout that would carry the SKBBK employee share, and the version 1.0 format remains valid until 30 September 2026. Until the new layout is published, the SKBBK amount is keyed into ASSIST by hand from your contribution summary. Check PERKESO’s circulars for the updated specification.
Updated July 2026
This guide is general information for Malaysian SMEs, not tax, legal or accounting advice. Always confirm current rules and figures with the relevant authority or your own adviser.
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Related guides
- EPF, SOCSO & EIS: a Malaysian employer’s statutory contributions explained
- PCB / MTD (Monthly Tax Deduction) for Malaysian employers