自愿放弃社保的承诺，为什么救不了企业——补缴社保的法律后果与实务应对

——员工签了《自愿放弃社会保险承诺书》，离职时却要求补缴并索要经济补偿，公司该怎么办？

每年总要接几个这样的案子。员工入职时和公司谈好：社保不缴，公司每月多发一笔“社保补贴”，并亲笔签下承诺书。两三年后员工离职，转头向社保部门投诉要求补缴，同时申请劳动仲裁，主张公司未依法缴纳社保、被迫解除劳动合同，要求支付经济补偿。老板想不通：当年是他自己不愿意缴的，白纸黑字是他签的，怎么反过来还要公司赔钱？

答案是：这份承诺，从一开始就没有效力。

一、“自愿放弃”为什么无效

社会保险不是可以讨价还价的福利，而是法律的强制要求。《社会保险法》第五十八条规定，用人单位应当自用工之日起三十日内为职工办理社会保险登记；第六十条规定，用人单位应当自行申报、按时足额缴纳社会保险费，职工个人应缴部分由用人单位代扣代缴。这些是法定义务，不因双方合意而免除——劳资双方谁都无权替国家“打折”。

2025年9月1日起施行的《最高人民法院关于审理劳动争议案件适用法律问题的解释（二）》（法释〔2025〕12号）把话说得更透：

无效即自始无效。承诺书签了等于没签，既挡不住补缴，也挡不住经济补偿。实践中不少企业把承诺书当“免死金牌”供着，如今它更像一份呈堂证供——只不过证明的是公司确实没有缴。

二、员工手里有三张牌

第一张，补缴本身。员工可以向社保经办机构、税务部门或劳动保障监察机构投诉，要求公司补缴欠费，本金包括单位缴纳部分和代扣的个人部分。

第二张，经济补偿。依据《劳动合同法》第三十八条，公司未依法缴纳社保，员工可以解除劳动合同；依据第四十六条，员工据此解除的，公司应当支付经济补偿——每工作满一年补一个月工资，六个月以上不满一年按一年计，不满六个月补半个月。基数按离职前十二个月的平均工资计算；那些以“补贴”名义发放的社保费用，一旦被认定为工资的组成部分，还会把这个基数抬高。

第三张，待遇损失赔偿。如果社保已经办不了——比如公司注销、或员工临近退休而缴费年限补不满——员工可以依据《劳动争议司法解释（一）》第一条第五项，就无法享受的社会保险待遇要求公司赔偿损失。

给员工提个醒：“从未参保”与“参了但基数低、险种不全”，各地裁判尺度并不完全一致。后者不少法院要求员工先行书面催告，公司在合理期限内仍不补办的，才支持经济补偿。所以解除劳动合同前，先发一份书面催告函，把程序走扎实，是成本最低的动作。经济补偿的仲裁时效为一年，从解除之日起算，别拖。

三、公司的账单远不止补缴本金

不妨替老板算一笔账。以一名月缴费基数8000元、欠缴三年的员工为例：单位部分按各地大致26%上下的合计费率，本金约7.5万元；个人部分约3万元；滞纳金按《社会保险法》第八十六条自欠缴之日起按日加收万分之五，逐月累计，一次性补缴时整体往往达到本金的两三成。一名员工的欠账就奔着十二万元去了——十几名员工的中小企业，过百万毫不稀奇。逾期仍不缴纳的，有关行政部门还可以处欠缴数额一倍以上三倍以下的罚款。

但这本账里最危险的从来不是滞纳金，而是工伤。《工伤保险条例》第六十二条第二款规定，应当参加工伤保险而未参加的用人单位，职工发生工伤的，由用人单位按照条例规定的工伤保险待遇项目和标准支付费用。翻译过来：未参保期间发生工伤，本该由基金支付的钱全部转嫁给公司，从医疗费到一次性伤残补助金，一个伤残等级较高的案子，成本动辄数十万元起步，比欠缴本金高出一个数量级。未参保期间的医疗费医保基金不予支付、养老待遇损失等衍生风险，也都要排队进来。

四、想补就能补吗：程序、时效与红线

补缴不是劳资私下转账了事，必须经社保经办机构和税务部门办理。员工投诉的常见入口是社保稽核、劳动保障监察和12333热线。程序一旦启动，公司面对的就是行政征缴，没有多少讨价还价的空间。

时效是补缴争议里最纠缠的一环。《劳动保障监察条例》第二十条规定，违法行为两年内未被发现的不再查处；但主流意见认为，欠缴社保处于持续状态，社保费追缴属于行政征收范畴，不适用该两年时效，经办机构可以责令补缴。不过各地经办口径确实有差异：补缴年限越长，对劳动合同、工资凭证、考勤记录等原始材料的要求越严格；个别地区曾出台超期欠费不予查处的特别规定，其合法性争议至今没有停过。动手之前，先核实当地现行做法，别拿别处的经验套自己。

还有一条红线要划清：能补的才补，不能造假补。为没有用工事实的人虚构劳动关系“挂靠代缴”，或伪造档案材料办理补缴，属于《社会保险基金行政监督办法》明令禁止的行为，轻则退回、罚款，骗取待遇的还可能构成犯罪。翻翻人社部门历年通报的骗保案例，“虚构劳动关系违规补缴”是常客。

补缴完成后，公司手里其实还有一项追索权：依据解释二第十九条第二款，用人单位依法补缴社会保险费后，请求劳动者返还已支付的社会保险费补偿的，人民法院依法予以支持。换句话说，当年发给员工的“社保补贴”，补缴之后可以要回来——前提是发放在案、金额清楚。

五、两张操作清单

给企业：①立即停止“承诺书＋补贴”的操作，已有的承诺书豁免不了义务，只会让账更乱；②主动自查、主动补缴，主动纠错的企业在与征缴机构沟通滞纳金、罚款时通常更有余地，也能避免被动等待员工举报；③单独评估工伤敞口，未参保期间哪怕一天，出工伤就是全额自担，过渡期可以用雇主责任险垫一垫；④梳理用工形态——非全日制、实习生、已享受基本养老保险待遇的返聘人员、真实的外包，参保义务各不相同，但别把实打实的全日制用工硬包装成这些形态；⑤离职结算时把“社保补贴”的往来写清楚，为日后主张返还留好证据。

给员工：①签过承诺书不等于认了，照样可以要求补缴并主张经济补偿；②解除前先书面催告，给公司明确的补办期限；③算总账——主张补缴和补偿的同时，公司有权要求返还已发的补贴，先算清楚净得多少；④别为了“保持连续缴费”去挂靠代缴，那是在给自己埋雷。

六、结语

社保争议很少孤立出现：一笔欠缴背后，往往连着经济补偿、待遇赔偿和工伤责任，而有序处理的窗口期并不长。对企业来说，成本最低的方案从来不是研究怎么“不缴”，而是把参保拉回原点：该登记的登记，该足额的足额。对员工来说，权利要主张，程序要做足，账要算清楚。

作者：罗曼罗兰律师（广东君吾律师事务所负责人）

（本文系普法文章，观点仅代表作者个人，不构成对具体案件的法律意见。）

 

English Version

Why a 'Voluntary Waiver' Cannot Save the Employer: Legal Consequences of and Practical Responses to Making Up Unpaid Social Insurance

The employee signed a "voluntary waiver of social insurance" at onboarding — and demanded back contributions plus severance upon leaving. What should the employer do? By Luo Manlan, Head of Guangdong Junwu Law Firm.

Every labour practice keeps a folder of such files. The employee and the employer agree at onboarding: no social insurance, and the company pays a monthly "insurance allowance" instead, sealed with a personally signed waiver. Two or three years later the employee leaves — and promptly complains to the social insurance authorities demanding back contributions, while filing for arbitration on the ground that the employer failed to enrol him as the law requires and that he was forced to resign, and claiming statutory severance. The owner is baffled: it was the employee who chose not to enrol, and the waiver is in his own hand. Why is the company the one paying now?

The answer is that the waiver was void from the very beginning.

I. Why "voluntary waivers" fail

Social insurance is not a negotiable benefit; it is a statutory mandate. Article 58 of the Social Insurance Law requires the employer to register the employee within thirty days of commencing employment, and Article 60 requires the employer to declare and pay contributions in full and on time, withholding the employee's share from wages. These obligations bind by law, not by consent: neither party may bargain the system down.

The Supreme People's Court's Interpretation No. 2 on Labour Dispute Cases (Fa Shi [2025] No. 12), effective 1 September 2025, says it outright:

Void means void ab initio. The waiver neither blocks the make-up contributions nor the severance. Many employers keep the signed waiver as a talisman; in court it now reads like an exhibit — one that proves precisely that the company did not pay.

II. The employee's three cards

Card one: back contributions. The employee may complain to the social insurance agency, the tax authorities or the labour security inspection body, requiring the employer to pay the arrears — both the employer's share and the withheld employee's share.

Card two: statutory severance. Under Article 38 of the Labor Contract Law, the employee may terminate where the employer fails to pay social insurance as required; under Article 46 the employer must then pay severance of one month's wage per full year of service, with six months or more but under a year counted as a full year, and half a month's wage for under six months. The base is the employee's average wage over the twelve months preceding termination — and the "insurance allowance", if found to form part of wages, pushes that base up.

Card three: damages for lost benefits. Where enrolment is no longer possible — the company has been deregistered, or the employee is near retirement age and the missing years cannot be made up — the employee may claim damages for the benefits lost, under Article 1(5) of the SPC's Interpretation No. 1 on Labour Dispute Cases.

A practice note for employees: courts are not uniform on the difference between "never enrolled" and "enrolled, but at a low base or with schemes missing". For the latter, many courts expect the employee to send a written demand first and allow the employer a reasonable period to cure, before severance-based compensation is awarded. So before terminating, send a written demand and fix the record — the cheapest, highest-value step. The one-year arbitration limitation runs from the date of termination; do not sit on the claim.

III. The employer's bill goes well beyond the principal

Run the numbers. Take an employee with a contribution base of RMB 8,000 and three years of arrears: the employer's share, at a combined rate of roughly 26%, comes to about RMB 75,000; the employee's share about RMB 30,000; and the surcharge of 0.05% of the arrears per day under Article 86 of the Social Insurance Law, accruing month by month, commonly lands at twenty to thirty per cent of the principal when everything is paid at once. A single employee can thus cost the company well over RMB 100,000 — multiply by a dozen employees and a small business is looking at seven figures. Continued refusal invites an administrative fine of one to three times the arrears.

The most dangerous item, however, is not the surcharge. It is work injury. Under Article 62(2) of the Regulation on Work-Related Injury Insurance, where an employer that should have enrolled its employees in work-injury insurance fails to do so, the employer itself pays all work-injury benefits the fund would have paid — medical costs, disability instalments, the lot. A high-grade disability case routinely starts in the hundreds of thousands of RMB, an order of magnitude above the arrears. Medical expenses during uninsured periods (which the medical insurance fund will not reimburse) and pension-benefit losses line up behind it.

IV. Can arrears always be made up? Procedure, time limits and the red line

Make-up payments cannot be settled by a private transfer between the parties; they must go through the social insurance agency and the tax authorities. Complaints usually enter through contribution audits, labour security inspection or the 12333 hotline. Once the process starts, the employer faces administrative collection with little room to bargain.

Time limits are the most tangled issue. Article 20 of the Labour Security Supervision Regulation bars investigation of violations not discovered within two years, but the mainstream view treats contribution arrears as a continuing state within administrative collection, not barred by the two-year rule, so agencies may order make-up payment. Local practice nonetheless varies: the longer the period, the stricter the demand for original records such as contracts, payroll vouchers and attendance logs; a few localities once imposed special caps on ultra-old arrears, and the controversy over their legality has never really ended. Verify the current local rule before acting — another city's experience is not yours.

And a red line: make up what can lawfully be made up, and never fabricate. Enrolling persons without a genuine employment relationship ("affiliated enrolment") or forging files to manufacture eligibility violates the Measures for the Administrative Supervision of Social Insurance Funds; at minimum the enrolment is unwound with fines, and obtaining benefits by fraud can become a criminal matter. In the regulators' annual fraud bulletins, "fraudulent make-up enrolment through fabricated employment" is a regular.

After paying up, the employer does hold one claim of its own: under Article 19(2) of Interpretation No. 2, once the employer has lawfully made up the contributions, the court will support its claim for the employee to return the "insurance allowance" already received — provided the payments are documented and quantified.

V. Two checklists

For employers: stop the waiver-plus-allowance practice immediately — existing waivers exempt nothing and only tangle the books; audit and correct proactively, which leaves more room to discuss surcharges and fines and avoids waiting for an employee's complaint; price the work-injury exposure separately — even one uninsured day means full self-funding, and employer liability insurance can bridge the gap; map enrolment duties across genuine part-timers, interns, rehires already drawing basic pension, and true outsourcing — without dressing up full-time employment as any of these; and at separation, document the allowance flows to preserve the future restitution claim.

For employees: a signed waiver does not forfeit your claims — back contributions and severance remain on the table; send a written demand with a clear cure period before terminating; do the arithmetic, because the employer may claw back the allowance it paid, so know your net position first; and never join an affiliated enrolment scheme to "keep contributions continuous" — that is a trap of your own laying.

VI. Conclusion

Social insurance disputes rarely travel alone: one arrears file drags severance, benefits-loss damages and work-injury liability behind it, and the window for an orderly resolution is short. For employers, the cheapest strategy was never "how not to pay" but a return to basics — register on time, pay in full. For employees, assert the right, run the procedure, and count the ledger.

By Luo Manlan, Head of Guangdong Junwu Law Firm

(This article is for general legal education only and does not constitute legal advice on any specific case.)