PTU is Mexico’s mandatory profit sharing: 10% of a company’s taxable profit, divided among the workforce and paid within 60 days of the annual tax return, which means by 30 May for companies. Since 2021 each worker’s share is capped at three months of pay or their own three-year average, whichever is higher. Brand new companies are exempt for their first year.
Nothing in a US payroll prepares a plant manager for this. PTU is not a bonus, not discretionary, and not something a good year lets you quietly skip. It is a constitutional right, it lands every May, and it belongs on the same spreadsheet as the rest of what it costs to employ someone in Mexico.
Most foreign manufacturers meet it in year two, which is exactly the year nobody budgeted for it.
The Rules, in One Table
Every line below comes from the Federal Labor Law, published in full by the Mexican Congress and last amended in May 2026. The article numbers are there so your accountant can check the work.
| Item | The rule | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Rate | 10% of taxable profit | National Commission resolution, under article 117 |
| Base | Taxable income as determined under the income tax law, not book profit | Article 120 |
| Deadline | Within 60 days of the date the annual tax return is due, so 30 May for companies | Article 122 |
| Split | Half by days worked, half by wages earned | Article 123 |
| Individual cap | Three months of salary, or the worker’s three-year PTU average, whichever is higher | Article 127, section VIII |
| Never participate | Directors, administrators and general managers | Article 127, section I |
| Temporary staff | Participate once they reach 60 days worked in the year | Article 127, section VII |
| Exempt companies | New companies in year one, new-product companies for two years, extractive companies during exploration | Article 126 |
Read the base line twice. PTU follows your taxable profit, the number your tax return produces, not the number your controller reports to headquarters. Those two drift apart for perfectly ordinary reasons, and in Mexico the gap has a price tag.
How the Money Actually Gets Split
The pool divides into two equal halves. One half is shared by days worked, so attendance decides it and the highest paid operator and the newest hire are treated identically. The other half is shared in proportion to wages earned, which is where seniority shows up.
A worked example, with round numbers chosen so you can follow the arithmetic rather than admire it:
- Taxable profit for the year: 30 million pesos, so the PTU pool is 3 million pesos
- 150 employees, all of whom worked the full year, and a total annual wage bill of 30 million pesos
- The days half: 1.5 million split 150 ways is 10,000 pesos each
- The wages half: an operator who earned 180,000 pesos that year takes 1.5 million times 180,000 divided by 30 million, which is 9,000 pesos
- That operator’s PTU: about 19,000 pesos, a little over a month of pay, and comfortably under the cap
Two details that trip up new payroll teams. Days worked includes maternity leave and time off for a work related injury, because the law counts those people as actively employed. And a confidence employee’s wage figure is capped at the highest unionized salary in the plant plus 20%, so your plant manager does not quietly absorb the wages half.
The 2021 Cap, and Who It Protects
Before the 2021 outsourcing reform, PTU had no individual ceiling. A small team sitting on a very profitable year could take home something that looked less like profit sharing and more like a lottery result.
Now each worker’s share stops at three months of their salary or the average of what they received over the last three years, and the law applies whichever of the two is higher. The wording matters: it is not the lower figure, and it is not the employer’s choice. Workers with no three-year history simply get the three-month test.
For a 150-person plant the cap rarely binds. For a 12-person engineering office that cleared 25 million pesos, it binds hard, and the amount above the cap stays with the company rather than being redistributed.
Why Maquiladoras Pay More PTU Than Their Margins Suggest
This is the part that surprises finance teams, and it is arithmetic rather than bad luck.
A maquiladora does not get to report whatever profit its intercompany pricing produces. Under the safe harbor rules it must report taxable profit of at least the higher of 6.9% of the assets used in the operation, including machinery owned by the foreign parent, or 6.5% of its operating costs. Since the advance pricing agreement route expired, the safe harbor is effectively the only option left for keeping the foreign parent out of permanent establishment territory.
Now connect it to PTU: profit sharing is 10% of taxable profit, and the safe harbor puts a floor under taxable profit. A capital heavy plant with 200 million pesos of equipment in service has a floor of 13.8 million pesos of taxable profit, which carries a PTU pool of roughly 1.38 million pesos, whatever the operation’s economics actually looked like that year.
Practitioners have been flagging this loudly. Writing for the Chihuahua academy of tax studies, Hector G. Aguilar warned that the move to the safe harbor raises taxable profit and with it both income tax and PTU, and that for the most asset intensive maquiladoras the 2025 figures could double or triple. The arithmetic above is our own illustration rather than a quoted case, so run your numbers before you budget.
The uncomfortable version: your PTU bill is partly a function of how much equipment you installed, and equipment does not care whether you had a good year.
What Changes Under a Shelter
Under a shelter the workers are legally the provider’s employees, which is the whole point of the model and something we set out in detail in what a shelter company actually does. PTU follows employment, so it is calculated on the shelter entity’s taxable profit, not on yours.
That is genuinely different arithmetic. A shelter’s taxable profit comes from a service margin, not from the value of your finished goods, so the pool your operators share in is generated by the provider’s business rather than by your product line.
What it does not do is make the cost disappear. Ask any provider two direct questions before signing: how PTU is calculated for your people, and whether it is billed to you as a pass-through or absorbed in the fee. The answer moves your annual number, which is why it belongs in any honest comparison of what a shelter actually costs, alongside the checks in our shelter company scorecard.
The Calendar, and the Step Everyone Forgets
PTU runs in a sequence, and the forgotten step is the first one.
- File the annual return by 31 March. That filing starts the clock for everything after it.
- Give the workforce a copy within 10 days of filing. This is a legal obligation, not a courtesy, and the annexes stay available to them for 30 days.
- Expect objections inside that 30-day window. Workers can formally challenge the declared figure.
- Pay by 30 May. In 2026 that date lands on a Saturday, so the practical deadline is Friday 29 May.
- Roll unclaimed amounts forward. Anything unclaimed in the year it is due is added to next year’s pool rather than returning to you.
One tax note for the payroll team: only the first 15 days of UMA are exempt from income tax, which at the 2026 daily value of 117.31 pesos is about 1,760 pesos per worker. Everything above that is withheld, and the exemption runs per worker per year, not per employer. Operators expecting the gross figure are reliably disappointed, so explain it before payday rather than after.
PTU also sits next to two other obligations with hard dates: aguinaldo before 20 December and, if you let anyone go, the severance arithmetic that runs on its own clock.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is PTU in Mexico?
PTU is the constitutional right of workers to share in their employer’s profits. It is set at 10% of the company’s taxable profit, divided among employees half by days worked and half by wages earned, and paid once a year.
When is PTU paid in Mexico?
Within 60 days of the deadline for the annual tax return. For companies that means by 30 May, and for individual employers by 29 June. In 2026 the company deadline falls on a Saturday, so pay by Friday 29 May.
Is there a cap on how much PTU one worker can receive?
Yes. Since the 2021 reform each worker’s share is limited to three months of their salary or the average of their PTU over the last three years, applying whichever figure is higher.
Do foreign owned companies have to pay PTU?
Yes. The obligation attaches to the Mexican employer entity regardless of who owns it. The only general exemption is for newly created companies during their first year of operation, with two years for companies making a genuinely new product.
Who is excluded from PTU?
Directors, administrators and general managers never participate. Temporary workers qualify only once they have worked at least 60 days in the year. Other confidence employees do participate, but their wage base is capped at the highest unionized salary plus 20%.
PTU is predictable once you know the base it keys off, and expensive when you find out in May. Send us your headcount and your equipment plan and we will map the annual labor calendar against your numbers, free of charge, including how it would run under our shelter program.
