Glossary
Wages (statutory definition)
Code on Wages §2(y): wages = basic pay + dearness allowance + retaining allowance. Everything else — bonus, HRA, conveyance, overtime, employer PF — is excluded by name.
Before the Codes, roughly a dozen labour laws each defined “wages” differently. The Code on Wages replaces all of them with one definition at §2(y); the Social Security Code’s §2(88) repeats it in substance.
Pay received in kind counts toward wages, but only up to 15% of total remuneration. Read alone this looks narrow — the deemed-wages 50% rule is what stops employers structuring around it.
Why it matters now: this single definition now drives gratuity, PF, overtime and leave-encashment math across every Code. It replaces the patchwork of old definitions HR teams used to juggle.