Country-wide policy
The Money Tests Are Multiples of the Minimum Wage, and the Wage Moves
El Salvador writes its qualifying incomes as multiples of the monthly minimum wage for the commerce and services sector, not as sums. Three wages for a pensioner, four for a rentista, six for a rentista with two or more people in tow, and four again as the monthly ceiling on a simplified bank account. The sector named is the highest-paid of the published rates, which matters: the same multiple of the agricultural rate would be a third lower. Nothing has to be amended when the Ministry of Labour reissues the wage decree, so every dollar figure on these pages is arithmetic rather than law, and it moves on a date no migration instrument announces. The rate in force since 1 June 2025 is $408.80 a month. The fees are the opposite case: the migration law's own schedule states them in dollars and they change only when the law does.
Topics it changes
- Residency on passive income
- Residency as a retiree
- Opening a bank account
- Residency through work
- Residency through investment
What it requires
- Read an income threshold as a multiple, and find the current minimum wage decree before stating a sum
- Use the commerce and services rate, which is the one all these provisions name
- Expect the thresholds to move whenever the wage decree is reissued, with no amendment to the migration law
- Expect the fees not to move, because they are stated in dollars in the law itself
At a glance
- Unit
- Monthly minimum wage, commerce and services
- Rate in force
- USD 408.80 a month
- Pensioner
- 3 wages
- Rentista
- 4 wages
- Rentista with two or more accompanying
- 6 wages
Article 145 inciso segundo of the migration law, quoted in full on the own-income record.
- Simplified bank account, monthly ceiling
- 4 wages
- Previous rates
- Repealed
Executive Decrees 9 and 10 of 7 July 2021, published in Diario Oficial 129, Tomo 432, of the same day and in force from 1 August 2021, are repealed by article 14 of the current decree.
- Fees
- Stated in dollars in the law, not indexed
What the law says
«Comercio y servicios | | $408.80 | $13.440 | $1.680»Our translation - not official
Commerce and services: $408.80 monthly, $13.440 a day, $1.680 an hour
The monthly, daily and hourly rates from the wage table. The migration and banking thresholds all use the monthly figure.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The judiciary's legislative repository, and the only place that publishes Salvadoran statutes as consolidated texts with a numbered reform legend naming every amending decree by number, date, Diario Oficial issue and volume. Article-level markers tie each amended paragraph to the decree that changed it, which is what makes an amended article citable here at all.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Its /R/ branch holds **amending acts, not amended laws**, and they read convincingly like the law they reform - a search for the financial inclusion law returns a decree that merely reforms it. Check the opening for Refórmase before quoting anything from that branch. File paths are opaque content hashes with no title and are filed under the decade and month of the **original** act, so a 2026 reform lives under a 2019 path and a document has to be identified from its own text. It also carries no statement of currency: the reform legend is the only evidence of how recently a text was rebuilt.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«El presente Decreto entrará en vigencia el día uno de junio de dos mil veinticinco, previa su publicación en el Diario Oficial, el cual deberá ser revisado posteriormente conforme a lo establecido en el Art. 159 del Código de Trabajo.»Our translation - not official
This Decree shall enter into force on the first day of June two thousand and twenty-five, following its publication in the Official Gazette, and shall be reviewed subsequently in accordance with article 159 of the Labour Code.
The review duty in the Labour Code is what makes this a moving figure. The consolidated text read here carries no decree number on its face; it repeals Executive Decrees 9 and 10 of 7 July 2021 and was itself amended by Executive Decree 12 of 24 May 2025.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The judiciary's legislative repository, and the only place that publishes Salvadoran statutes as consolidated texts with a numbered reform legend naming every amending decree by number, date, Diario Oficial issue and volume. Article-level markers tie each amended paragraph to the decree that changed it, which is what makes an amended article citable here at all.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Its /R/ branch holds **amending acts, not amended laws**, and they read convincingly like the law they reform - a search for the financial inclusion law returns a decree that merely reforms it. Check the opening for Refórmase before quoting anything from that branch. File paths are opaque content hashes with no title and are filed under the decade and month of the **original** act, so a 2026 reform lives under a 2019 path and a document has to be identified from its own text. It also carries no statement of currency: the reform legend is the only evidence of how recently a text was rebuilt.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«cuyo monto no sea inferior a cuatro salarios mínimos mensuales vigentes correspondientes al sector comercio y servicios»Our translation - not official
the amount of which is not less than four monthly minimum wages in force for the commerce and services sector
'Vigentes' - in force - is the word that makes the threshold track the decree automatically.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The judiciary's legislative repository, and the only place that publishes Salvadoran statutes as consolidated texts with a numbered reform legend naming every amending decree by number, date, Diario Oficial issue and volume. Article-level markers tie each amended paragraph to the decree that changed it, which is what makes an amended article citable here at all.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Its /R/ branch holds **amending acts, not amended laws**, and they read convincingly like the law they reform - a search for the financial inclusion law returns a decree that merely reforms it. Check the opening for Refórmase before quoting anything from that branch. File paths are opaque content hashes with no title and are filed under the decade and month of the **original** act, so a 2026 reform lives under a 2019 path and a document has to be identified from its own text. It also carries no statement of currency: the reform legend is the only evidence of how recently a text was rebuilt.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«no deberá superar los cuatro salarios mínimos urbanos mensuales del sector comercio y servicios»Our translation - not official
shall not exceed four monthly urban minimum wages for the commerce and services sector
The same unit in a different statute, which is why a rentista's qualifying income and a simplified account's monthly ceiling happen to be the same number.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
El Salvador's financial supervisor, whose library republishes the financial statutes including the law on simplified accounts.
Standing: Applies the rule
Cannot be cited for: It must not be cited for currency: its editions carry **no reform legend at all**, unlike the judicial repository's, so a text published here cannot be shown to include later amendments - and the article our banking record rests on is reported to have been reformed since. It also must not be cited for what an ordinary current account requires: the statute it publishes covers only the simplified savings account and the electronic-money record, and what a bank asks for beyond that is set by each bank's own programme.
We re-read it every 120 days. More about this source