Australia Take-Home Pay Calculator

Australia's financial year runs from 1 July to 30 June, not January to December, so a salary you accept in August 2026 is already partway through the 2026-27 year, and the rates in this calculator apply to income earned between 1 July 2026 and 30 June 2027. Pay is usually discussed as an annual package, but employees are actually paid weekly or fortnightly, so this calculator shows both the annual figure and the weekly amount that would actually land in a bank account, dividing the annual total by 52 as employers do for salaried staff.

Residency status and the tax rates that follow

How much tax you pay depends heavily on your residency status for tax purposes, which is a separate question from citizenship or visa category. It turns on where you actually live and the nature of your stay, something this calculator cannot determine for you. Australian residents get a tax-free threshold of the first $18,200 of income, then 15% up to $45,000, 30% up to $135,000, 37% up to $190,000, and 45% above that, confirmed against the ATO's official 2026-27 resident rate table. The second bracket was cut from 16% to 15% for 2026-27, the year's main tax change. Foreign residents face a materially different schedule: there is no tax-free threshold at all, so the first dollar earned is taxed, starting at a flat 30% up to $135,000 and rising to 37% and 45% at the same upper brackets as residents. At the time this was checked, the ATO's foreign resident rate page still listed 2025-26 as its most current published table. Since foreign residents never had the bracket that changed for 2026-27, applying the same figures forward is a reasonable inference, but it should be reconfirmed if the ATO later issues a distinct 2026-27 table.

Residents on modest incomes also receive the Low Income Tax Offset (LITO), a separate reduction applied after the bracket calculation: up to $700 for taxable income at or below $37,500, tapering down by 5 cents per dollar between $37,501 and $45,000, then by 1.5 cents per dollar between $45,001 and $66,667, reaching zero above that. LITO cannot reduce your tax below zero and does not apply to foreign residents, since it is specifically a resident tax concession.

Medicare levy and study loans

The Medicare levy is a separate 2% charge on taxable income that funds Australia's public health system, calculated independently of income tax. Residents below a low-income threshold ($28,011 for a single person, based on the most recently published ATO figures) pay no levy at all, and between that threshold and roughly 1.25 times its value ($35,013) the levy phases in gradually at 10 cents per dollar above the threshold rather than jumping straight to 2%. Foreign residents are not required to pay the Medicare levy, since they generally cannot access the Medicare system it funds. It's worth being clear about a common point of confusion: the Medicare levy is not the same thing as the Medicare Levy Surcharge (MLS). The levy applies to nearly everyone; the surcharge is an additional 1% to 1.5% charge that only applies to higher-income earners who don't hold private hospital insurance, as an incentive to take pressure off the public system. This calculator does not include the surcharge, since it requires knowing your private health insurance status, which isn't part of the inputs here.

If you have a HELP, HECS, VET Student Loan, or similar study and training support debt, compulsory repayments are withheld once your income passes a threshold of $69,528 for 2026-27. From the 2025-26 income year, HELP moved to a marginal system: instead of applying one flat rate to your entire income once you cross the threshold, each portion of income within a band is charged its own rate: 15% on the portion between $69,528 and $129,717, 17% on the portion between $129,717 and $186,050, and a flat 10% of total income above that. This calculator uses your taxable income as a stand-in for the official 'repayment income' figure, which technically also includes items like exempt foreign income and reportable fringe benefits. Most salaried employees without those extra income types will see accurate results, but anyone with significant non-salary income should check the ATO's own repayment calculator.

What this calculator leaves out

Two things this calculator deliberately leaves out are worth understanding. Superannuation, meaning the Superannuation Guarantee that reached 12% of ordinary earnings on 1 July 2025 as the final step of a long legislated phase-in, is not subtracted from take-home pay here, because for most employees it is paid by the employer on top of the stated salary rather than withheld from it. It only reduces your cash take-home pay if your employment contract explicitly states your package is 'inclusive of superannuation.' Working Holiday Makers on a 417 or 462 visa also use a different rate schedule again (15% up to $45,000, then the same higher brackets as residents), which this calculator does not model since it isn't one of the two residency options offered. The figures are mentioned here for reference only, based on the ATO's most recently published table at the time of writing.

The result is an estimate for planning purposes, not a payslip guarantee, so always compare it against your actual employment contract, PAYG withholding, and any additional offsets that may apply to your personal tax return.

Before your first payslip: the TFN declaration

Before any of this reaches your pay, one form has to reach your employer. The Tax file number declaration is what tells a payer your TFN and whether you are claiming the tax-free threshold from them. If the TFN has not arrived within 28 days, the ATO requires the payer to withhold 47% from a resident payee and 45% from a foreign resident, which is why a first payslip can look catastrophic and then correct itself a fortnight later. The threshold matters just as much for anyone holding two jobs, because it is meant to be claimed from one payer at a time unless total income across all of them will stay under it, and claiming it twice is the most common reason a tax return comes back with a bill instead of a refund.

Read the figure above as a target for the contract rather than a prediction for a single payday. PAYG withholding is calculated per pay period, so compare it against the year-to-date totals in your payroll account rather than one fortnight in isolation. Then check the two inputs that flip the result hardest: the residency status you selected, which changes the tax-free threshold and the Medicare levy at the same time, and whether a study debt is genuinely being withheld, since that appears as its own line and switches on the moment income crosses the threshold.