Understanding your pay

An advertised salary is a gross annual figure. What lands in your account is that number after income tax and the Medicare levy, and possibly after a study loan repayment. Employer superannuation is usually paid on top of it rather than deducted from it.

These tools take an offer apart so you can compare it with what you have now, or with another offer that quotes its number differently.

Working through it

1. Step 1

   Convert gross salary to take-home pay

   This is the headline calculation: income tax, the low income tax offset and the Medicare levy applied to a resident salary, with weekly, fortnightly and monthly figures using the same PAYG method as a payslip.

   Open the salary calculator

2. Step 2

   Work out whether the ad includes super

   “$120,000 plus super” and “$120,000 package” are thousands of dollars apart. Strip the superannuation guarantee out of a total package to compare the two on the same basis.

   Open the salary package calculator

3. Step 3

   Check the employer contribution

   See what the superannuation guarantee adds on a given salary, and where the maximum contribution base caps it on very high incomes.

   Open the super calculator

4. Step 4

   Convert between hourly, weekly and annual

   Useful for comparing a casual or contract rate against a salaried role, or for checking that a quoted hourly rate matches the annual figure in a contract.

   Open the salary conversion calculator

5. Step 5

   Price a pay rise

   A percentage rise on a gross salary does not increase take-home pay by the same percentage, because part of the increase is taxed at your marginal rate.

   Open the pay rise calculator

6. Step 6

   Add a study loan repayment

   A compulsory HELP or HECS repayment is worked out on your repayment income and comes out on top of income tax, which is why take-home pay can be lower than a simple tax estimate suggests.

   Open the help/hecs calculator

What these tools do not cover

• These tools assume you are an Australian resident for tax purposes with no other income and no salary sacrifice arrangement.
• Bonuses, allowances, shift loadings and commissions are taxed when paid and are not modelled as part of an annual salary here.
• A final tax position is settled on your tax return, not by a withholding estimate.

Each calculator lists its own assumptions and sources in full. Results are estimates — see the disclaimer for what that means before you rely on a figure.