A:

All payments for National insurance, social benefits, gifts, pension contributions, monies paid into severance pay funds, employee benefits funds, etc are all costs of salaries. Payroll taxes have also generally been accepted in the past by EU as employment cost, even though in some cases they are really another form indirect taxes.

The one main condition is that they are paid to an organisation/insurance company/etc not related to the organisation and are not just “book entries” in the accounts.