Brazil Severance Pay Calculator (Rescisão Trabalhista CLT)
Calculate Brazilian severance pay (rescisão trabalhista) from your monthly salary, hire date, last working day, and type of dismissal. Estimates saldo de salário, prorated 13th salary, prorated vacation pay, and the 40%/20% FGTS penalty.
Rights by type of dismissal or resignation
The reason for termination drastically changes whether aviso prévio, the FGTS penalty, and prorated 13th salary/vacation pay are owed.
| Type | Aviso prévio | FGTS penalty | 13th salary / vacation (prorated) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dismissal without cause | Full | 40% | Yes |
| Mutual agreement | Half | 20% | Yes |
| Resignation | None | None | Yes |
| Dismissal for cause | None | None | No (only overdue vacation) |
Mutual agreement lets you withdraw up to 80% of your FGTS balance, but you lose eligibility for unemployment insurance (seguro-desemprego). Dismissal for cause blocks any FGTS withdrawal.
What is Brazilian severance pay (Rescisão Trabalhista)?
When an employment contract ends in Brazil, the CLT (Consolidação das Leis do Trabalho) requires the employer to pay a combination of severance items (verbas rescisórias): the salary balance for days actually worked that month (saldo de salário), the prorated 13th salary (décimo terceiro proporcional), prorated vacation pay with its constitutional 1/3 bonus (férias proporcionais), and any overdue unused vacation (férias vencidas). CLT Article 477 requires all of this to be paid within 10 days of the contract ending.
Just as important is what happens to the FGTS (severance guarantee fund) the employer has been depositing — 8% of salary every month — throughout your employment. On a no-cause dismissal, a 40% penalty on top of the accumulated balance becomes payable, and the entire balance becomes withdrawable. Resignation and for-cause dismissal trigger no such penalty, and the balance normally cannot be withdrawn at all. The 2017 labor reform introduced a middle ground, mutual-agreement termination (acordo, CLT Art. 484-A), which halves the penalty (20%) while allowing withdrawal of up to 80% of the balance. This tool estimates the total payout for each of these four scenarios.
Sources used in this calculation
Statutory figures such as tax and insurance rates come from the public bodies listed below. They change when the law is revised, so please also check the primary source before relying on the result for an important decision.
- Brazilian severance pay (rescisão trabalhista) calculation rules — Brazilian Federal Legislation Portal (Planalto) Effective from 2017-11 ／ Last checked 2026-09-08
How to use this calculator
- Enter your monthly base salary Enter your gross monthly salary in reais, before tax and social security deductions.
- Enter your hire date and last working day Your length of service affects the aviso prévio period as well as the prorated 13th salary and vacation pay.
- Choose the type of dismissal or resignation Pick whichever of the four scenarios best matches your situation.
- Fill in the notice-period details Depending on the type chosen, specify whether notice was paid in lieu or whether you fulfilled it.
- Review the breakdown See the cash paid directly by the employer, the FGTS balance and penalty, and the estimated total payout.
Tips for getting more out of it
- The aviso prévio period grows with seniority under Lei 12.506/2011: a 30-day base plus 3 days per full year of service, capped at 90 days (reached at 20 years).
- The FGTS balance shown here is only a simplified estimate. Check the official Caixa Econômica Federal "FGTS" app for your exact balance.
- Mutual-agreement termination (acordo) is a relatively recent option, introduced by the 2017 labor reform (Lei 13.467/2017). Before that, even a genuinely mutual separation had to be filed on paper as either a no-cause dismissal or a resignation.
- Prorated 13th salary and vacation pay both use the convention that any calendar month with 15 or more days worked counts as a full month toward the proration.
- This tool only models the fixed monthly base salary — it does not include overtime, allowances, or bonuses, which can change the actual settlement amount.
When to use this
You were dismissed without cause and want to estimate your payout
Get a rough estimate of what you should receive before the official settlement is calculated.
You are considering resigning for a new job
Check that no FGTS penalty applies on resignation, and see the impact of not giving 30 days' notice.
Your employer proposed a mutual-agreement termination (acordo)
Compare the notice pay and FGTS penalty against a standard no-cause dismissal to inform your negotiation.
HR or payroll staff need a quick settlement estimate
Swap the hire date, last working day, and dismissal type to estimate several employee scenarios quickly.
Glossary
- rescisão trabalhista (severance settlement)
- The collective term for the payments an employer owes when an employment contract ends. Which items apply depends on the reason for termination.
- FGTS (severance guarantee fund)
- A fund into which employers deposit 8% of salary every month on the employee's behalf. A no-cause dismissal adds a 40% penalty (20% for mutual agreement) on top of the balance.
- aviso prévio (prior notice)
- The notice period required before termination. On a no-cause dismissal, Lei 12.506/2011 scales it from 30 to 90 days by seniority, payable either in lieu (indenizado) or worked out (trabalhado).
- prorated 13th salary (décimo terceiro salário)
- A portion of Brazil's mandatory annual bonus, prorated by the number of months worked in the year up to termination.
- prorated vacation pay (férias proporcionais)
- Vacation pay prorated by the months worked in the current vesting period (período aquisitivo), plus the constitutional 1/3 bonus required since the 1988 Constitution.
- férias vencidas (overdue vacation)
- Vacation days already earned in an earlier vesting period that were never taken. Unlike the prorated vacation for the current period (férias proporcionais), this is a vested right owed regardless of the reason for dismissal, always paid with the 1/3 bonus.
- dismissal for cause (justa causa)
- Dismissal due to serious misconduct. The employee loses nearly every entitlement except the salary balance and any overdue vacation.
Frequently asked questions
Side Note — why does FGTS carry a "40% penalty"?
FGTS (the severance guarantee fund) was introduced in 1966 to replace an earlier system, estabilidade decenal, which effectively made it impossible to dismiss an employee once they had ten years of service at the same company. That protection was so strong it backfired: employers had a clear incentive to dismiss workers just before their tenth anniversary, undermining the very job security it was meant to provide. FGTS replaced that rigid protection with a more flexible system of monthly deposits.
The 40% penalty added to the FGTS balance on a no-cause dismissal is not just compensation for the employee — it also functions as an economic disincentive against dismissing workers too readily. When the 1988 Constitution was drafted, the penalty stood at roughly 10%; later legislation raised it to the 40% still in effect today.
Mutual-agreement termination (acordo) only became an official part of the CLT with the 2017 labor reform. Before then, genuinely consensual separations were common in practice, but the law only recognized two categories — dismissal or resignation — which pushed many employers and employees to file a mutual separation on paper as a no-cause dismissal, so the employee could improperly claim unemployment insurance they were not entitled to. Formalizing the mutual-agreement option gave this long-standing gray-area practice a proper legal footing.