Payslip Decoder — Understand Your Israeli Tlush Sachar

Israeli payslips are dense. A single tlush sachar can have thirty or more line items with Hebrew abbreviations, multiple subtotals, and calculations that look right but are not. The first time you receive one, almost nothing is recognizable. Even after a year in Israel, employees commonly miss errors that cost them hundreds of shekels a month.

The Decoder walks through your payslip section by section. The seven main groupings are: gross pay (sachar bruto) with all its components, income tax (mas hachnasa) withholding, National Insurance (Bituach Leumi) employee share, health tax (mas briyut), the mandatory pension contribution, optional study fund (keren hishtalmut) if your employer offers one, and net pay (sachar neto). Each section has standard Hebrew abbreviations the Decoder translates.

Common Olim confusions the Decoder addresses: meal allowances (shovim/havchana) are taxable income even when paid as vouchers; travel reimbursement (nesi'a) is partially taxed depending on distance; vacation accrual (tzvirat chofesh) shows the days you have banked, not money; sick days (machala) are usage-tracked separately; the shovi keseph column shows non-cash benefits (company car, phone) being added to taxable income.

Use the Decoder when something on your payslip does not match what your employer promised. If you think an entire calculation looks wrong, run it through the Bruto-to-Neto Calculator first to verify the bottom line, then use the Decoder to identify which line is the source of the mismatch.