There are concepts, phenomena, ideas, manifestations, etc. that suddenly appear, become accepted and massified, generating a halo of mysticism around them.
And they seem to be true, real, truthful, but when they are analyzed with greater rigor, they end up not being what they promised to be, invalidating the theories of some who claimed that they were true, or at least that is what was believed.
I am not here to talk about paranormal anecdotes, but rather about ideas and concepts widely used in the world of payroll.
I have frequently encountered people dedicated to the calculation of payrolls who believe that these concepts are "the net" at the time of making payroll calculations, but upon analyzing them, I have found that they are not totally true, nor are they supported by a legal basis, which is why I have called them "payroll myths".
The first myth I am going to talk about is a number that is widely used in payrolls and it is the famous "30.4".
Have you ever used this number in payroll?
So what do you think, if you use it indiscriminately you might be miscalculating your payroll.
In Mexico it is very common for salaries to be defined per unit of time and the most commonly used unit of time is the month.
We see monthly salaries everywhere: job offers, employment contracts, benefit packages, even in our minds we know how much we earn monthly, not per day, but per month.
So far so good, it is normal and nothing unusual, but when we have to calculate the payroll, of any periodicity, it is imperative to obtain the daily installment of that salary and that is when many people use the famous "30.4".
Where does the "30.4" come from?
The way in which we have delimited time, since ancient times, is by relying on the stars, and the most used has been the Sun.
This star has marked the human times being very usual to have periods of time linked to the "king star" (years, days, hours, etc.), well, despite being so important and very helpful, it turns out that it is not so accurate when it comes to setting the time we use in payroll calculations.
A calendar year lasts 365 days, 5 hours, 45 minutes and 46 seconds(https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-41943066), this duration is complicated when we want to have a standardization of salaries.
The year is divided into 12 periods called months, the months are made up of days, but we know that they do not have the same duration and when we are calculating the payroll, these variations complicate the calculations, for this reason, we try to set identical periods so that in each payroll the same amount of salaries is paid.
Conventionally, all years will have 12 months and, so that all months give us the same number of days, we divide the 365 days of the year (rounded) by 12, giving us as a result the famous 30.4 (In fact, there are those who take more decimals because the extended result is 30.416666666 to infinity).
Well, so far so logical and not questionable, but what is the myth behind the "30.4"? Here are my reasons.
The myth behind the 30.4
The most important data in the payroll is the daily salary and frequently we do not have it directly from the contract because there it is stipulated to be fixed for monthly periods, so we must start from a monthly salary and convert it to a daily salary, how is this calculation made?
Here comes the interesting part, we have to divide the monthly salary amount by the days of the month, but the months have different number of days, therefore, it would be very complicated to divide it by 28, 29, 30 or 31 depending on the month in which we are calculating the payroll.
To have a fixed daily salary, many people divide the amount of the monthly salary by 30.4, in this way they have an almost exact figure (remember that the year does not last 365 days, but there is a fraction of hours, minutes and seconds that are the reason for the existence of the 366-day years called leap years), but that mathematically fits very well in the 365-day years.
The problem with using 30.4 as the divisor to obtain the daily wage is that we will obtain a daily wage amount that goes against the Federal Labor Law and the Social Security Law.
In Article 89, third paragraph, of the Federal Labor Law we find the only formula in said law to obtain the daily wage when it is fixed for weekly or monthly periods.
Although it is true that this article applies to the calculation of the integrated daily salary used to determine labor indemnities, since there is no other article that indicates how to obtain the daily quota to calculate ordinary payrolls, we use it as a supplementary basis to apply this base to any payroll calculation.
The following is a transcription of this paragraph:
"Article 89.
...
When the salary is fixed per week or per month, it shall be divided by seven or by thirtyas the case may be, to determine the daily wage."
30.4 does not appear here, the law indicates 30 closed, without decimals.
If we turn to review the Social Security Law, we find that it is aligned with the Federal Labor Law, because it presents exactly the same procedure, let us observe:
"Article 29.
I. ...
II. To fix the daily salary in caseit is paid by week, fortnight or monththe corresponding remuneration shall be dividedby seven, fifteen or thirty respectively.The same procedure shall be used when the salary is fixed for periods other than those indicated, ...".
Again we can observe that 30.4 is not mentioned, in fact, if we completely review these two laws, we will never find a 30.4 there, therefore, if both legal norms tell us that to obtain the salary per day we must use 30 as divisor, when someone uses 30.4 he is not complying with the Law.
But that's not all, the biggest problem with using 30.4 as a divisor is that the whole payroll will be miscalculated, because the resulting salary is a daily salary lower than the one that should be paid, which is obtained by applying the number 30 as a divisor.
Let's look at an example:
| the Law | the Myth | ||
| Monthly salary | $9,000.00 | $9,000.00 | |
| Divider | 30 | 30.4 | |
| Daily wage | $300.00 | $296.05 |
As can be seen, the daily salary obtained by using 30.4 is less than that resulting from applying the provisions of the law, and this legally represents that less salary is being paid than that agreed in the contract.
The effect of paying less salary than agreed in the labor relationship is the same as if the employee were unjustifiably dismissed (Article 51, section IV, LFT), and it is also grounds for the imposition of a fine in the event of a labor inspection (Art. 1000 LFT).
Therefore, applying the divisor 30.4 to obtain the daily salary may be very common, accurate, intuitive and other virtues that fascinate many nominators to use it, but it is contrary to the Law and entails onerous consequences, so never use it!
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See you next time!
