What does an employee actually cost?

How this is calculated

The CRA’s own Payroll Deductions Online Calculator answers a different question: what lands in the employee’s bank account. It computes CPP, EI and income tax withheld from them, and stops there. None of the employer’s own cost appears.

Three things make up that cost:

• Employer CPP matches the employee’s contribution dollar for dollar, up to the year’s maximum. Above the first earnings ceiling a second contribution (CPP2) starts, which is why the cost curve has a kink in it.
• Employer EI is 1.4× the employee premium, not the same as it: a detail that quietly understates budgets when people assume matching.
• Provincial employer health tax, in Ontario, British Columbia, Manitoba, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador. It is charged on total payroll rather than per person, so what one employee “costs” here is really their share of a business-wide bill.

Income tax withheld is deliberately absent. That money is the employee’s, passing through your bank account on its way to the CRA: counting it would inflate the answer by its largest line.

Comma does not run payroll. It keeps the books underneath it: import the journal your payroll provider produces and the liabilities: CPP payable, EI payable, the provincial levy: sit in accounts you can reconcile, rather than being rebuilt from statements at year-end.