Your first employee in Algeria: declaring the activity and the employee to CNAS, step by step

Hiring your first person changes the nature of the work: you are no longer responsible only for your own declaration, but for another person’s, with short deadlines. The good news: CNAS publishes the list of steps on its employer page. Here are the steps in order, with the deadlines it states.

First: who is this article for?

It is for an employer who has a commercial register entry, a craftsman’s card or a creation decision (sole trader, EURL, SARL…). For an auto-entrepreneur we do not know: the CNAS list of documents asks for a commercial register entry and a NIS, which the status does not have, and we found nothing on the pages read about what replaces them, or even whether an auto-entrepreneur may employ. Ask the CNAS agency and ANAE before hiring. See the auto-entrepreneur guide.

The first 10 days

Two steps, within 10 days of recruiting the first employee, at the CNAS agency of the place of your business.

1. The activity declaration. The file contains: the activity declaration; birth certificate no. 12 or copy of the S12 of the manager or owner; a copy of the commercial register entry (or the creation decision, approval or craftsman’s card); a copy of the statutes; a copy of the tax registration card; a copy of the NIS; copies of the RIB or RIP. For the acronyms, see the glossary.

2. The employee’s affiliation. The law requires you to declare any person doing paid work, whatever their nationality, the amount or nature of the pay, full-time, part-time (at least 20 hours a week, according to CNAS) or occasional. The file: an affiliation request, birth certificate no. 12 or copy of the S12 if the employee is not already registered, the family record if married. With no request within the deadline, CNAS may affiliate them automatically.

Every month or quarter

You declare and pay contributions within 30 days of the end of the period: each quarter if you have fewer than ten employees, each month otherwise (the page writes “more than ten (09)”: the exact threshold is to be confirmed). The declaration is made on the online declaration portal or on the DAC form.

The general rate is 34.5%: 25% on you, 9% on the employee (you withhold it from the pay), and 0.5% of gross payroll for social works. The salary subject to contributions cannot be below the SNMG, which has been 24,000 DA a month since 1 January 2026.

Example (invented, to show the calculation): for a gross salary of 40,000 DA, the employer share is 10,000 DA (25%) and the employee share 3,600 DA (9%): you pay 13,600 DA, not counting that 0.5% contribution. To see what the employee actually takes home after CNAS and IRG, use the net salary, IRG and CNAS calculator. Salary IRG is declared separately: see the G12 and G50 ter calendar.

Every year: the DAS

Within 30 days of the end of each calendar year, you send CNAS the annual declaration of salaries and employees (DAS), which details pay by quarter and the contributions due. It is sent electronically; CNAS provides software to extract the file.

A work accident

Any work accident is declared within 48 hours of becoming aware of it. Plan who handles it before you need to.

Reductions for a first hire

CNAS publishes reductions on the employer share for certain hires: 50% for a disabled person; for a contract of 12 months or more, a rate of 15% in the North or 2.5% in the South and High Plateaus instead of 25% for a job seeker, and 5% in the North for a first-time job seeker; rates of 20% or 16% for contracts of 6 to 12 months in tourism, crafts, culture, agriculture, construction and public works, and services. Careful: the page was last modified on 29 April 2025, and we have not confirmed it is still current, nor the documents required. Deduct nothing without the agency’s written agreement.

What we could not confirm

The CNAS page announces late increases and penalties without giving the amount. It is unclear on the ten-employee threshold between quarterly and monthly declaration. We did not consult the texts of Law 83-14 themselves, only CNAS’s presentation of them. Finally, the position of an auto-entrepreneur who hires is not established. The phone directory of agencies is on the CNAS site; we did not consult it.