Peasant Tax Calculator

A wage-to-take-home calculator for 2025–26 ATO resident rates, with a "days of the week you actually work for yourself" visual.

What it shows

  • Enter your wage in any period (weekly, fortnightly, monthly, yearly).
  • Toggle gross ↔ net — if you enter net, the calculator runs a bisection solver to find the gross wage that yields your take-home.
  • Complete deduction stack: income tax (with LITO offset), Medicare levy (with low-income shade-in), Medicare Levy Surcharge (if you do not have private hospital cover), HECS/HELP repayment.
  • Employer super (12% from 1 July 2025) is shown separately — it is on top of your wage, not a deduction from it, and is locked away until preservation age.
  • "Days of the week" visual converts your effective rate into a 5-day working week.
  • Comparator table against six reference incomes: minimum wage, median FT, average FT, backbench MP, Cabinet Minister, Prime Minister.

How to read it

Your effective rate is total deductions divided by gross. Multiply by 5 to get the number of days a week you are working for the Commonwealth. If the result says "2.1 days", you are working Monday and most of Tuesday for the ATO before you see a dollar for yourself.

Your marginal rate is the rate on the next dollar you earn. It is higher than your effective rate because of the progressive bracket structure. This matters when you are considering overtime or a pay rise — the extra money is taxed harder than the base.

What this calculator deliberately does NOT include

Income tax is only one layer. Your real effective rate is higher because of:

  • GST (10%) — absorbed into everything you spend.
  • Fuel excise (52.6c/L full rate; currently temporarily halved — see Fuel Tax Calculator).
  • Alcohol and tobacco excise — extreme on beer and cigarettes, embedded in the retail price.
  • Stamp duty — amortised across your working life if you buy property.
  • Council rates and rego — state and local layers, flat fees regardless of income.
  • Payroll tax — levied on employers, mostly passed through to wages as suppressed raises.

Rough estimate: for a typical wage earner, layering GST + fuel excise + state/local fees adds roughly 5–10 percentage points to the effective rate seen in this calculator.

Data sources

  • ATO — individual income tax rates 2025–26, Medicare levy thresholds, HECS/HELP repayment thresholds, LITO.
  • ATO — superannuation guarantee schedule (12% from 1 Jul 2025).
  • Remuneration Tribunal — federal parliamentary base salary and Cabinet/PM loadings.
  • ABS — full-time ordinary time earnings (median / average wage figures).
  • See full methodology at Tax Methodology.

Caveats

  • Resident individual only. Non-residents have different thresholds and no tax-free threshold.
  • Part-year, bonus, fringe benefits, reportable super contributions, novated leases, rental losses, CGT events, trust distributions, franking credits, and dependant rebates are all not modelled.
  • Assumes the whole of the input is ordinary time earnings subject to PAYG — no salary sacrifice.
  • Binary-search solver converges to ±1 cent; rounded to whole dollars in display.

Disclaimer

Educational reference only — not financial or legal advice. Consult a registered tax agent for personal advice.

Last reviewed: 11 Apr 2026