The Immigration Skills Charge: The Sponsorship Cost Only the Employer Pays

What the Immigration Skills Charge Is

The Immigration Skills Charge is a levy on the employer for the privilege of sponsoring a worker from outside the UK labour market. It is charged per worker, per period of sponsorship, and it is paid at the moment you assign a certificate of sponsorship — not annually, not in instalments, and not by the person you are hiring.

It applies to two routes only: Skilled Worker, and Senior or Specialist Worker. Paragraph S5.10 of the sponsor guidance is explicit that "the ISC does not apply to any other sponsored work route". Seasonal Worker, Scale-up, the Temporary Worker routes and the Graduate route carry no charge.

Almost everything else written about it is written for the worker, which is odd, because a worker never pays it and is legally barred from being made to.

Who Pays It — and the Rule About Passing It On

You do. That is the whole rule, and it is enforced harder than most sponsors realise.

GOV.UK states it on the employer-facing page in one sentence: "You must pay the immigration skills charge yourself. Your licence may be revoked if you ask the sponsored worker to pay the fee or any costs linked to your application."

The sponsor guidance is blunter. Paragraph S5.7 of Part 2: "You must not pass on any of the ISC to, or attempt to recoup it from, any of your sponsored workers. If we find out that you have done so, we will normally revoke your licence."

Read "attempt to recoup" carefully, because that is the phrase that catches people. It is not only a line on a payslip. A clawback clause that makes a worker repay sponsorship costs if they leave inside two years, a deduction dressed up as a training bond, a lower starting salary agreed in exchange for the employer "covering the immigration" — all of that is recovery by another route, and Part 1 at L6.17 uses the same construction: the Home Office "will normally revoke your licence if you recoup, or attempt to recoup, by any means" the listed fees.

And the list has grown. The Immigration Skills Charge was the original prohibition. L6.17 now also bars you from recovering, from a sponsored worker:

• the Skilled Worker sponsor licence fee and any associated administrative costs, where the recovery happens on or after 31 December 2024
• the sponsor licence fee on any other route, and associated administrative costs, where the recovery happens on or after 9 April 2025
• the certificate of sponsorship fee and associated administrative costs for a Skilled Worker, where that certificate was assigned on or after 31 December 2024
• the certificate of sponsorship fee and associated administrative costs on the Global Business Mobility, Minister of Religion, International Sportsperson, Scale-up and Seasonal Worker routes, where the certificate was assigned on or after 9 April 2025

So the employer-only side of a Skilled Worker hire is now the licence fee, the certificate fee and the skills charge together. What sits outside the prohibition is the worker's own immigration cost: their visa application fee, the immigration health surcharge where it applies, and the maintenance funds they have to show. Whether you choose to cover any of that is a commercial decision about how competitive your offer is, not a compliance one.

If any of this is being written into an employment contract, that is a question for a regulated immigration adviser or an employment solicitor rather than for us or for a blog post. The point here is only that the charge is not a cost you can share, structure around, or recover later.

What It Costs and How It Scales

Two rates, set by your organisation's size and status on the date you assign the certificate.

GOV.UK gives you two rows: £480 for the first 12 months and £240 for each additional six months if you are a small or charitable sponsor, £1,320 and £660 if you are medium or large. The Schedule to the Immigration Skills Charge Regulations 2017 gives you the whole ladder, and it is the ladder you actually pay against.

That table was substituted on 16 December 2025 by the Immigration Skills Charge (Amendment) Regulations 2025, when the charge rose by 32%. Before that date it was £364 and £182 for small and charitable sponsors, £1,000 and £500 for everyone else. Certificates assigned before 16 December 2025 were charged at the old rates, which is why an employer comparing this year's invoice with a colleague's from 2024 will find a gap that looks like an error and is not.

Three points about the arithmetic that catch people out.

It is charged on the period stated on the certificate, not the period the worker ends up staying. A three-year certificate costs a medium or large sponsor £1,320 for the first year and £660 for each of the four further six-month blocks — £3,960, paid on day one, before the worker has applied for anything.

There is a floor. GOV.UK: "If the worker will be in the UK for longer than 6 months but less than a year, you must pay for at least 12 months." A ten-month contract is charged as twelve.

You cannot spread it. "You must pay the full charge in one go." For a care group sponsoring six workers on five-year certificates as a medium employer, that is £39,600 in a single month, before a single certificate fee.

Your size is fixed at the date of assignment. You are usually a small sponsor if at least two of these apply: annual turnover of £15 million or less, total assets worth £7.5 million or less, 50 employees or fewer. Charitable status is assessed separately, through the charity registers or an HMRC confirmation of charitable status for tax purposes. If your size changes, S5.6 gives you 20 working days to tell UKVI, and failing to report it is a compliance matter in its own right — the guidance lists downgrading, suspension and revocation as possible consequences.

For how the charge sits alongside the licence fee and the certificate fee in a full budget, our companion guide to getting a UK sponsor licence sets out all three together.

When You Do Not Pay It

The exemptions are in S5.9, and they are narrower than the summaries suggest.

A period of under six months, from outside the UK. You pay the charge where the worker is applying from outside the UK for six months or more, or from inside the UK for any duration at all — including a period of less than six months. A short assignment from overseas is genuinely exempt; the same short period applied for in-country is not.

Nine occupation codes that matter to you, and three that probably do not. GOV.UK's employer page lists nine, all of them what the Home Office's own caseworker guidance calls PhD-level occupations: chemical scientists (2111), biological scientists (2112), biochemists and biomedical scientists (2113), physical scientists (2114), social and humanities scientists (2115), natural and social science professionals not elsewhere classified (2119), research and development managers (2161), other researchers, unspecified discipline (2162), and higher education teaching professionals (2311).

Regulation 4(a) of the Regulations, as substituted on 16 December 2025, actually lists twelve — clergy (2463), sports players (3431) and sports coaches, instructors and officials (3432) were added by the same amendment that raised the rates, and neither the employer page nor S5.9 of the sponsor guidance has caught up. The caseworker guidance explains why it makes no practical difference: those three occupations "are not eligible for skilled worker and must apply under the relevant route (either International Sportsperson or T2 Minister of Religion)", and neither of those routes carries the charge in the first place. So if you are sponsoring a Skilled Worker, the working exempt list is the nine.

Note what is on none of these lists. There is no care code, no construction code, no hospitality code, no driving code — regulation 4 contains no health or care exemption of any kind. A Health and Care Worker visa hire pays the charge in full. The Health and Care Worker route exempts the worker from the immigration health surcharge, which is a different cost under a different rule, and employers conflate the two constantly. If someone has told you care hires are exempt from the skills charge, they were thinking of the health surcharge.

Dependants. No charge for a worker's partner or children, unless they are separately sponsored on one of the two routes themselves.

Workers switching from study. The exemption applies where the worker holds current permission as a Student, Child Student, Tier 4 (General), Tier 4 (Child), or Short-term Student (English Language) on the date you assign the certificate. S5.13 draws two hard lines: it does not apply if that permission has already expired, and it does not apply to someone on the Graduate route or to a dependant of a student. Those two exclusions are where the exemption is most often claimed wrongly.

Extensions that do not extend. If you assign a new certificate to a worker you already sponsor and the new permission will not run past their current permission, there is no further charge. If it does run longer, you pay for the additional period only.

The EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement concession, for a Senior or Specialist Worker who is an EU national or Latvian non-citizen, transferred from an EU business in the same sponsor group they have worked for at least a year, on an assignment of no more than 36 months, with the certificate assigned on or after 1 January 2023.

Pre-6 April 2017 continuity, for a worker sponsored under Tier 2 before the charge existed who has held permission on the route continuously since.

Refunds, and the 12 Months You Never Get Back

This is the part of the charge that has real commercial consequences, and it is the part nobody explains before you pay.

Full refund. S5.24 lists five circumstances: the visa application is refused; the worker withdraws it before a decision; the application is granted but the worker never travels or never starts work for you; the certificate expires unused (a certificate lapses if not used within three months of assignment); or you withdraw the certificate before it is used.

So the process failing early costs you nothing. Everything is recoverable right up to the point the worker starts.

Partial refund — with a floor. Once they have started, the position changes sharply. If the worker is granted less time than you sponsored them for, moves voluntarily to another sponsor, or leaves the post early for any reason at all — resignation, redundancy, dismissal, failing probation, ill health, failing to obtain a required professional qualification — S5.23 states that the Home Office "will always retain the first 12 months of any ISC you have paid" and refunds only the unused six-month periods beyond that.

The guidance gives its own worked example: a three-year certificate where the worker leaves after six months is refunded for the final two years, and the first twelve months are retained.

Put that in money. A medium or large sponsor pays £6,600 on a five-year certificate. If the worker leaves after eight months, £5,280 comes back and £1,320 does not — a cost carried for a hire that produced eight months of work, on top of the certificate fee, the vacancy, and the recruitment starting again.

No refund at all. S5.26: the worker changes job but stays with you; the worker switches to another immigration route in the same job; the worker transfers to another sponsor under TUPE; your licence is made dormant; your licence is revoked.

That last one is worth sitting with. Lose your licence for recovering the charge from a worker, and you also lose every pound of charge you have already paid for every worker on it.

Timing. Refund decisions are made within 90 days of the relevant event — the date you report through the SMS, the certificate expiry date, the refusal date, or the date an administrative review is dismissed. If a refused applicant asks for an administrative review, the 90 days runs from the outcome of that, not from the original refusal.

Three Ways Employers Get This Wrong

Paying the small-sponsor rate when you are not one. S5.15 to S5.17 set out what follows: the certificate is invalid until the shortfall is paid, and the worker's application stops dead. UKVI emails a top-up link to your Key Contact valid for 72 hours, sends one further link if that expires, and refuses the application if it is still unpaid. Two missed emails during someone's annual leave is enough to lose a candidate.

Budgeting the charge per year. It is not an annual cost, it is a single upfront payment for the whole certificate period. A five-year hire is a five-year bill in month one.

Treating a certificate period as free to inflate. Sponsoring for five years when the role and the retention picture support two costs a medium or large sponsor £3,960 more on day one — and if the worker leaves at eight months, you get the difference back but never the first twelve months.

Where the Charge Actually Sits

Every UK employer we speak to about sponsorship has done the same arithmetic and reached the same worry: the charge is a real number, it is paid before any work is done, and it went up by nearly a third. All true.

It is also, on any five-year view, not the number that should decide anything. £6,600 across five years of a sponsored role is a rounding error against the salary of that role — and it is very small indeed against the alternative, which for most of the employers who search this term is another year of the post staying open.

The number that should worry you is the refund floor. The system is built so that a hire that fails inside twelve months costs you the full first year of the charge whatever the reason, and the further you are into the process the less of anything comes back. That prices sponsorship exactly the way it should be priced: cheap if you hire the right person and they stay, expensive if you do not.

Which makes the charge an argument about candidate quality, not about budget.

If you are also hiring in Ireland, none of this machinery exists there — no licence, no certificate, no skills charge. Our guide to visa sponsorship in Ireland sets out the comparison properly.

Where CA Recruitment Fits

We are a recruitment agency, not an immigration adviser. We do not file sponsor licence applications, assign certificates on your behalf or give immigration advice — for that you want a regulated adviser or solicitor, and if you need a name we will point you at one.

What we do is the half the charge is actually paying for: the worker. We source and vet candidates, primarily from the Philippines. We check the role, the occupation code and the salary against the current thresholds before you commit money to anything, which matters more than usual here, because the charge is paid at certificate assignment and is only fully refundable while the process is still in front of you. And we stay with the hire through the certificate, the visa application and arrival, because the expensive failure in this system is not a refusal — a refusal is refunded — it is a worker who starts and does not stay.

If you are running vacancies on both sides of the Irish Sea, we work the UK Skilled Worker route and the Irish DETE permit routes, so it is one conversation rather than two. The full picture for UK hires is on our UK Skilled Worker visa sponsorship page.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much is the Immigration Skills Charge? £480 for the first 12 months if you are a small or charitable sponsor, plus £240 for every additional six months. £1,320 for the first 12 months if you are a medium or large sponsor, plus £660 for every additional six months. The maximum, over the longest sponsorship period of five years, is £2,400 for a small or charitable sponsor and £6,600 for a medium or large one. Those rates apply to certificates of sponsorship assigned on or after 16 December 2025, when they rose by 32% from £364 and £1,000 a year. Figures from GOV.UK, checked 28 August 2026.

Can the Immigration Skills Charge be passed on to the worker? No. Paragraph S5.7 of the sponsor guidance states: "You must not pass on any of the ISC to, or attempt to recoup it from, any of your sponsored workers. If we find out that you have done so, we will normally revoke your licence." GOV.UK repeats the point on its employer pages. The prohibition covers indirect recovery as well as a direct charge, so a salary deduction, a clawback clause or a repayment agreement tied to the charge all breach it.

Who is exempt from the Immigration Skills Charge? You do not pay it for a worker applying for entry clearance from outside the UK for less than six months, for the worker's dependants, for nine PhD-level occupation codes (2111, 2112, 2113, 2114, 2115, 2119, 2161, 2162 and 2311), for a worker who holds valid permission on a Student, Child Student, Tier 4 or Short-term Student (English Language) route, or for a Senior or Specialist Worker covered by the EU-UK Trade and Co-operation Agreement concession. Regulation 4(a) of the Immigration Skills Charge Regulations 2017 also lists 2463 clergy, 3431 sports players and 3432 sports coaches, but those occupations cannot be sponsored as Skilled Workers at all, so the exemption is academic. There is no exemption for care, construction or hospitality roles.

Do I pay the Immigration Skills Charge for a Health and Care Worker visa? Yes. The Health and Care Worker visa is part of the Skilled Worker route, and regulation 4 of the Immigration Skills Charge Regulations 2017 contains no health or care exemption — the exempt occupation codes are scientific, research and higher education roles, plus three occupations that cannot be sponsored as Skilled Workers at all. The charge is payable in full for care and nursing hires. What the Health and Care Worker route exempts is the immigration health surcharge, which the worker would otherwise pay — that is a separate cost and a separate rule.

Do I get the Immigration Skills Charge back if the worker leaves? Partly. If the worker leaves their post early, changes sponsor, or is granted less time than you sponsored them for, paragraph S5.23 of the sponsor guidance says the Home Office "will always retain the first 12 months of any ISC you have paid" and will refund unused six-month periods after that. So on a five-year certificate for a medium or large sponsor, a worker who leaves after eight months returns £5,280 of the £6,600 and the remaining £1,320 is gone. You get a full refund only if the visa application is refused or withdrawn, if the certificate expires unused, if you withdraw it, or if the worker is granted the visa but never starts work for you.

When do I pay the Immigration Skills Charge? At the point you assign the certificate of sponsorship, in one payment, for the whole period stated on the certificate. If you underpay — most commonly by paying the small-sponsor rate when you are a medium or large sponsor — the certificate is invalid until the difference is paid. UKVI emails a top-up payment link to your Key Contact that is valid for 72 hours, sends one replacement link if that expires, and refuses the worker's application if it is still unpaid.

Does Ireland have an equivalent of the Immigration Skills Charge? No. There is no sponsor licence, no certificate of sponsorship and no skills charge in the Irish system. An Irish employment permit is a standalone application to the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment for one job and one worker, and under section 55 of the Employment Permits Act 2024 the permit fee cannot be recovered from the worker either.