Your income and your loan
All amounts in $ a year unless marked. Change any figure and the page recalculates. Yellow boxes are waiting for an entry.
Your compulsory repayment this year
The repayment is worked out on repayment income, which is wider than taxable income, and raised in your notice of assessment.
Compulsory repayment at each level of repayment income ($)
What changes your repayment
The repayment bands for
From 2025-26 the rate applies only to income above each threshold, until the top band, where 10% applies to all of your repayment income.
How long your loan could take to repay
Each year: any voluntary repayment before 1 June, then indexation on 1 June, then the compulsory repayment when your return is assessed. Your income grows each year and the thresholds rise with inflation.
Loan balance at the end of each year ($)
About this calculator
Purpose. To estimate the compulsory repayment on a HELP or other study and training support loan for one year, and to project how long the loan could take to repay.
Assumptions and why we chose them. You can change every assumption above that is not a legislated rate.
- The 2025-26 or 2026-27 repayment thresholds and rates, as published by the ATO. Rates as at .
- Repayment income is taxable income plus reportable fringe benefits, reportable super contributions, net investment losses and exempt foreign employment income, as the law defines it.
- The example figures are repayment income of $150,000 and a $40,000 loan, the example in our method notes.
- Loan indexation of 2.8% a year, the rate applied on 1 June 2026. It is the lower of the consumer price index and the wage price index, so future rates will differ.
- Income growth of 3.0% a year, close to recent wage growth.
- The repayment thresholds rise each year at the inflation rate you enter, because the government indexes them each year. Holding them fixed would overstate future repayments.
- Today's dollars use 2.5% inflation, the middle of the Reserve Bank's target band.
- The projection starts in the year you choose, with the balance you enter, and the first indexation on the 1 June in that year.
Limitations and their effect.
- Your real repayment is worked out by the ATO on assessment. Amounts your employer withholds for your loan are only a prepayment and can differ.
- The projection depends heavily on the income growth and indexation you enter. A career break, part-time work or a change in income would change the payoff year.
- It does not cover overseas debtors, which have their own reporting rules, remission, re-credited units, bankruptcy or the cancellation of a debt on death.
- It does not include the one-off 20% reduction applied in 2025. Use your current balance after that reduction.
- Results are rounded to the dollar.