MPF Default Contributions: What to Do If Your Employer Misses Payments

Suspect your employer hasn’t been paying your MPF, but afraid reporting it will cost you your job? Even in the early years of the MPF system, the MPFA opened a safety valve for employees: reports of MPF default contributions can be made anonymously — and the authority will still investigate.

What should you do about MPF default contributions?

If you suspect MPF default contributions, call the Contribution Enquiry Line on 183 3030 to be connected to your trustee and check whether your employer paid on time over the last three months; if something looks wrong, report it to the MPFA, which accepts anonymous complaints and will gather evidence from the employer, the employee and the trustee company. Named complaints generally make evidence-gathering easier, and the MPFA will notify named complainants of the outcome.

Employers’ duties: enrolment and contributions

Under the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Ordinance, enrolling employees and making contributions is the employer’s legal duty:

1. Employers must enrol employees in an MPF scheme within 60 days of employment;
2. Employers must make monthly mandatory contributions equal to 5% of the employee’s relevant income;
3. Employers must not delay or under-report contributions without cause.

Employees should also build the habit of checking their MPF accounts from time to time. For more on employer duties, see the official eMPF guides or mpf.hk’s MPF education hub.

How the MPFA handles complaints

Whether a complaint is named or anonymous, the MPFA follows it up. If the complaint is substantiated, the authority can:

Complaints are not the only line of defence. The MPFA regularly inspects workplaces — construction sites, restaurants and retail shops among them — and investigates suspected defaults through reports filed periodically by trustees.

How heavy are the penalties?

Under the law at the time, an employer who failed to enrol employees or defaulted on contributions faced up to HK$350,000 in fines and three years’ imprisonment; an employer who deducted contributions from wages but never paid them faced up to HK$450,000 and four years’ imprisonment. In December 2011, an employer who failed to enrol a beautician employee and owed over HK$5,600 was sentenced to 60 hours of community service at Kowloon City Magistrates’ Courts — the first community-service sentence for MPF default since the system began a decade earlier.

The bottom line: MPF contributions are a statutory right, not an employer’s favour. If you suspect default, don’t stay silent for fear of losing your job.