If you are self-employed — a freelancer, sole proprietor, commission agent or gig worker — CPF works very differently from an employee’s. There is no employer paying in, and only one contribution is compulsory: MediSave. Everything else is voluntary. The upside is that voluntary contributions come with real tax relief and the same high CPF interest. Here is what you must do, what you can do, and how it cuts your tax.
🩺 The one compulsory bit: MediSave
If your net trade income for the year is more than $6,000, you must make a MediSave contribution. The amount is a percentage of your net trade income that rises with age — roughly 8% to 10.5% — applied up to the same income ceiling used for employee CPF. After you file your taxes, IRAS and the CPF Board work out what you owe and bill you; you can pay it in one go or by instalments through GIRO. This is the floor every self-employed person has to meet.
💼 What you don’t get automatically
Because there is no employer and no compulsory Ordinary or Special Account contribution, self-employed people do not automatically build the CPF savings that fund housing and retirement — your mandatory contributions go only to MediSave. That makes retirement planning more of a deliberate choice than it is for employees, whose OA and SA fill up every payday. If you have no other retirement plan, this gap is the one to close.
💰 Building retirement: voluntary contributions
You have two main ways to put more into CPF voluntarily:
- Voluntary Contributions (VC) spread across all three accounts (OA, SA, MA) in your usual age-based ratio. Total CPF from all sources in a year — mandatory plus voluntary — is capped at the CPF Annual Limit of $37,740.
- RSTU cash top-ups straight into your Special or Retirement Account, which earn the ~4% floor and qualify for tax relief of up to $8,000 for yourself (plus up to $8,000 for family members).
There is also a MediSave-only voluntary contribution if you simply want to build healthcare savings.
🧾 The tax angle
This is where it pays off. Your compulsory MediSave contribution is tax-deductible, and voluntary contributions attract relief too — all sitting under the overall $80,000 personal income-tax relief cap. For a self-employed person in a middle or higher tax band, topping up can shave a meaningful amount off the tax bill while building retirement savings at 4%. See the effect on your own income with the Tax Relief Optimizer.
📊 A worked example
Say your net trade income is $60,000. You will owe a compulsory MediSave contribution of roughly 8–10% of that, billed after you file — money that earns ~4% and lowers your taxable income. On top of that, you decide to top up $8,000 to your Special Account under RSTU. If your top dollar of income is taxed at 11.5%, that top-up saves about $920 in tax this year, and the $8,000 then compounds at the 4% floor until retirement. You have trimmed your tax and built your nest egg in one move.
🧭 What to do next
Two habits go a long way: set aside for your MediSave bill so it is not a shock, and treat voluntary top-ups as your substitute for the OA and SA an employee gets automatically. See how a top-up affects your tax with the Tax Relief Optimizer, project the long-term impact with the Retirement Projection, and if you are weighing whether to top up at all, read Is topping up your CPF worth it?. For the exact MediSave rates by age and income, check the CPF Board’s self-employed scheme page.