Cash value of unused service incentive leave.
Leave cash value
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Daily rate
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Days converted
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The five days the law guarantees
Service incentive leave is the Labor Code's baseline paid-leave entitlement. Once you have completed at least one year of service, you earn five paid leave days each year that you can use for either vacation or sickness. It is a floor, not a ceiling. Many employers grant more generous vacation and sick leave on top, but only these five days carry a legal guarantee, and only these five days are convertible to cash when they go unused. This tool values that convertible portion, so it never pays out more than the statutory five days no matter how many you enter.
Turning leave into cash
If you do not use your service incentive leave during the year, the law lets you convert what is left into money at year-end or when you leave the company. The conversion runs at your daily rate, and this calculator derives that rate by dividing your monthly salary by a working-days factor of 26. Multiply the daily rate by the number of unused days, capped at five, and you have the cash value. The 26-day divisor and the five-day cap are the figures this tool applies; both come from Labor Code practice administered by the Department of Labor and Employment, so confirm the current rule with DOLE, particularly the divisor, which some companies set differently depending on how they treat rest days.
Five unused days on a PHP 30,000 salary
Take the defaults. You earn PHP 30,000 a month and reach the year-end with all five service incentive leave days unused. Dividing PHP 30,000 by 26 gives a daily rate of about PHP 1,153.85. Five days at that rate is PHP 5,769.
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A note on the figures you will see on screen. The result card rounds the daily rate to a whole peso, showing PHP 1,154, while the headline cash value uses the unrounded rate behind the scenes. So if you multiply the displayed PHP 1,154 by five you get PHP 5,770, a peso off the PHP 5,769 the tool reports. The cash value is the one to trust, because it carries the full precision. The chart below shows how each of the five days stacks into that total.
Is the cash-out taxed?
The monetized value of unused leave can be tax-exempt within limits the Bureau of Internal Revenue sets, and it is often folded into the PHP 90,000 ceiling that covers 13th-month pay and other benefits. Where your total benefits for the year stay under that cap, the leave conversion typically escapes tax; above it, the excess can become taxable. Because the treatment depends on your other benefits and your employer's policy, confirm how your payout is taxed with the BIR rather than assuming the cash arrives whole.
Who is not covered by service incentive leave?
Several groups fall outside the entitlement, including those already enjoying at least five days of paid leave, government employees, managerial staff, field personnel, and workers in very small establishments under the headcount the Labor Code specifies. If you sit in one of these categories, your leave may rest entirely on company policy rather than the statute, so this tool's five-day cap may not describe your situation.
Can my employer make leave expire instead of paying it?
For the statutory five days, no. Unused service incentive leave that you have earned must be converted to cash if not taken, so a strict "use it or lose it" rule cannot wipe out the legal minimum. Leave granted on top of the statutory five, however, follows whatever rules your company sets, which is why many people lose generous vacation balances while still keeping the right to cash out the core five days.