Colombia Withholding Tax Calculator

The Article 383 table applies to your net taxable base, not to your salary

📊 The Article 383 table

Up to 95 UVT0% — nothing is withheld
95 to 150 UVT19% of the excess
150 to 360 UVT28% + 10 UVT
Over 2,300 UVT39% + 770 UVT

What moves your withholding

Mandatory health and pension contributions come off before anything else. They are not your income, so the table is never applied to gross pay.
The 25% exempt income is worked out on what is left after contributions and deductions, not on the salary. It is the most repeated mistake, and always in favour of whoever makes it.
Certify your dependants with your employer. They are worth 10% of gross pay capped at 32 UVT a month, and without the certificate payroll will not apply them.
The 40% cap trims the sum of exempt income and deductions. On high salaries it always kicks in, which is why stacking benefits stops paying off past a certain point.

The table does not apply to your salary

Almost every retención en la fuente calculator out there — retención en la fuente is the withholding your employer takes out of each payslip — grabs the Article 383 table and applies it straight to the salary. That always produces a number higher than the real one, and sometimes far higher: on a salary of six million pesos, applying the table to gross pay charges 194,649 pesos where the correct answer is zero. Zero, not a small figure. The reason is that the table is not applied to your salary but to the net taxable base, and building that base is half of the calculation: first the mandatory health and pension contributions come out, because they are not your income; then whatever deductions you have certified; then the 25% exempt income of Article 206; and on top of all of it falls the 40% cap of Article 336. What survives is what enters the table. This is why a calculator that only has the table is useless: the table is the easy part, and the part everybody copies correctly.

The order set by Article 388

The Estatuto Tributario — Colombia's tax code — fixes the order, and the order matters, because every step changes the base for the next one. One: mandatory health and pension contributions come off the gross, 4% each. Two: the certified deductions come off, which are mortgage interest, private health cover and dependants, the last of these being worth 10% of gross pay capped at 32 UVT a month. Three: the 25% exempt income of Article 206, paragraph 10, is worked out, and here is the trap, because that 25% is calculated on what is left after the two previous steps, not on the gross, and it carries its own cap of 790 UVT a year. Four: the Article 336 cap applies, which says the sum of all exempt income and deductions cannot exceed 40% of net income, capped at 1,340 UVT a year. What survives the four steps is the taxable base, and that is what enters the Article 383 table, which is written in UVT rather than in pesos. The UVT — Unidad de Valor Tributario, the tax unit every Colombian threshold is expressed in — is 52,374 pesos for 2026, set by DIAN Resolution 000238 of 15 December 2025.

What to keep in mind

This page uses procedimiento 1, the monthly method, which is what most companies apply. Procedimiento 2 starts from a fixed percentage worked out in June and December and gives a different number.
Deductions have to be CERTIFIED with your employer before payroll is run. Having them and not certifying them is the same as not having them.
The 790 UVT cap on exempt income and the 1,340 UVT cap on the 40% limit are ANNUAL. Here they are spread over twelve months, which is the market standard, but legally you may concentrate them.
The prima de servicios, the statutory bonus paid in June and December, has its own withholding rule and does not enter this monthly calculation.
If you change employer mid-year, the new one does not know what has already been withheld from you. The annual tax return is what squares everything up.
Withholding is not the tax: it is an advance payment. If too much was withheld, the annual income tax return gives it back to you.

Where this calculator stops

It does not cover procedimiento 2, which needs the average of the previous twelve months.
It does not cover income other than salary: professional fees, rent and dividends follow other tables.
It does not apply the special treatment of the prima, the cesantías severance fund or redundancy pay.
It assumes an ordinary salary. An integral salary contributes on 70% of the total and its clean-up works differently.
It leaves out specific exempt income such as that of pensioners or Article 206 paragraphs 1 to 9.
Your company's payslip is what counts. This page is here to show where the number comes from and to spot a mistake.

Worked examples

One that withholds nothing and one that does

Salary of $6,000,000, no deductions

Mandatory contributions = 6,000,000 × 8% = 480,000
Subtotal = 6,000,000 − 480,000 = 5,520,000
25% exempt income = 5,520,000 × 25% = 1,380,000
Taxable base = 5,520,000 − 1,380,000 = 4,140,000
In UVT = 4,140,000 / 52,374 = 79.05 UVT

79 UVT sits below the 95 of the first bracket: withholding $0. Applying the table to the salary would overcharge 194,649

Salary of $15,000,000, no deductions

Contributions = 15,000,000 × 8% = 1,200,000
Subtotal = 13,800,000, 25% exempt = 3,450,000
Base = 13,800,000 − 3,450,000 = 10,350,000
In UVT = 197.6 UVT, which falls in the 28% bracket
Withholding = (197.6 − 150) × 28% + 10 UVT = 23.3 UVT

Withholding of $1,222,605. Applying the table to the salary would give $2,524,032: more than double

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my employer withhold less than other calculators say?

Because almost all of them apply the Article 383 table directly to the salary, and the table does not go on the salary: it goes on the net taxable base. Before you reach the table, out come the mandatory contributions, the certified deductions and the 25% exempt income. On a six-million salary the gap between the two approaches is 194,649 pesos against zero.

At what salary do they start withholding?

From the moment the net taxable base passes 95 UVT, that is 4,975,530 pesos in 2026. Careful: 95 UVT of BASE, not of salary. Since the clean-up takes roughly 31% off the gross between contributions and exempt income, in practice the threshold usually sits above seven million pesos of salary, and it rises if you have certified deductions.

What is the 40% cap and who does it affect?

Article 336 says the sum of all your exempt income and deductions cannot exceed 40% of your net income, capped at 1,340 UVT a year. On normal salaries it never kicks in, because the 25% exemption on its own, with no deductions, does not reach 40%. It kicks in when you stack private health cover, mortgage interest, dependants and voluntary contributions at once: from there on, adding one more benefit stops reducing your withholding.

Is withholding the same as income tax?

No. Withholding is an advance your employer hands to DIAN, the Colombian tax authority, on account of your tax for the year. The annual return works out the real tax and subtracts what was already withheld: if too much came out, you get a refund; if too little, you pay the difference. That is why two people on the same salary can end the year paying different amounts.

What do I gain by certifying dependants?

A deduction of 10% of your gross salary capped at 32 UVT a month, that is 1,675,968 pesos in 2026. A spouse with no income counts as a dependant, as do children under age, children up to 23 who are studying, and parents or siblings who depend on you financially. You have to certify it with your employer: if you do not, payroll will not apply it even though you qualify.

Does anything change in 2026?

The Article 383 table did not change: it has been the same since Law 2010 of 2019. What changed is the UVT, which went from 49,799 to 52,374 pesos under DIAN Resolution 000238 of December 2025, and since the whole table is written in UVT, every threshold rises with it. The tax reform that proposed touching Article 383 was shelved in December 2025.