Your salary and the amount you sacrifice
All amounts in $ a year. Change any figure and the page recalculates. Yellow boxes are waiting for an entry.
Cash now against super later
Salary sacrifice lowers your take-home pay and adds to your super. The total of the two shows the tax effect.
Without and with salary sacrifice ($ a year)
Your concessional contributions against the cap
Your employer's super counts toward the cap first. Your salary sacrifice uses what is left.
What changes the result
Tax and super, line by line
Salary sacrificed super is reportable super. It is added back when working out HELP repayments, the Medicare levy surcharge and Division 293 tax.
The result at other sacrifice amounts
The change in take-home pay plus net super, compared with no sacrifice, from nothing up to your cap.
Take-home pay plus net super, compared with no sacrifice ($ a year)
About this calculator
Purpose. To estimate, for one year, how salary sacrificing into super changes an Australian resident employee's take-home pay, tax and the amount added to their super account, and to check the result against the concessional contributions cap and Division 293.
Assumptions and why we chose them. You can change every assumption above that is not a legislated rate.
- Resident tax rates, the low income tax offset, the 2% Medicare levy, the surcharge tiers, HELP repayment rates and super caps for the year you choose, as published by the ATO. Rates as at . The 2026-27 Medicare levy low-income thresholds had not been published at that date, so the 2025-26 thresholds are used.
- Employer super at 12%, the legal minimum, on your salary before sacrifice. It stops at the maximum contribution base: .
- The example figures are a $100,000 salary and a $10,000 sacrifice, the example in our method notes.
- Your fund pays 15% contributions tax on before-tax contributions. Fund fees, insurance premiums and investment earnings are left out because they are the same with or without the sacrifice.
- From 2026-27 the $1,000 standard work deduction applies automatically, with no receipts. It is the lower of $1,000 and your salary after sacrifice, reduced dollar for dollar by the work-related expenses you enter. Other income such as interest, dividends and rent does not count toward it, and other deductions are claimed on top. A sacrifice only changes it if your salary after sacrifice falls under $1,000. It is not available for 2025-26.
- "Take-home pay plus net super" adds a dollar in super to a dollar in your pocket. They are not the same: money in super is generally locked away until you retire.
- Division 293 income is taxable income plus reportable fringe benefits (none assumed), plus before-tax contributions. Contributions over your cap count in that income through your taxable income, and are left out of the contributions Division 293 tax applies to.
- Contributions over your cap are added to your taxable income, with a 15% offset for the contributions tax already paid. The excess concessional contributions charge was removed from 2021-22, so it is not added.
Limitations and their effect.
- One year only. It does not project your super balance or what it could be worth at retirement.
- It does not model the low income super tax offset, which refunds up to $500 of contributions tax on income up to $37,000, the government co-contribution or the spouse contribution offset. Each would change the result for lower incomes.
- It does not cover defined benefit funds, more than one employer, a total super balance near the transfer balance cap, family Medicare thresholds, fringe benefits or non-super salary packaging.
- It assumes a valid salary sacrifice arrangement, agreed in writing before the pay is earned. A sacrifice of pay already earned is not effective.
- Results are rounded to the dollar.