Stage 02 · Landing
What your pay is worth after tax.
A job offer names a number before tax. What lands in your account each payday is smaller, once income tax, ACC and, if you are in it, KiwiSaver come off. Put the offer in and see the three deductions separately, with the rate each one comes from. This is arithmetic on what you enter, not advice and not a payslip. Every rate on it comes from a government source, named and dated below so you can check it yourself.
Work it out
Gross pay in, take-home pay out
Inland Revenue's published rates, your own numbers. Sourced rates · your inputs
Most New Zealand job offers quote a yearly salary. Hourly is the usual one for part-time and casual work.
Your visa sets the hours you may work, not this slider. What this page leaves out.
Changing this only changes the arithmetic. Your real rate is the one your employer has, and KiwiSaver is not open to everyone who works here. What this page leaves out.
of your gross pay reaches your account. The rest is the three deductions below.
Unlike the two rows above it, KiwiSaver is not a tax. It leaves the pay packet, but it goes to a retirement account in the member's name.
The same take-home pay, other ways
Arithmetic on the numbers you typed, at Inland Revenue's published rates. Your employer's payroll decides your actual deductions and Inland Revenue squares up the year at the end of it, so check anything that matters at ird.govt.nz.
Rates are Inland Revenue's own, listed with their check dates under the table below. The arithmetic is ours, and it assumes one job on the M tax code for a full year.
Read this before you trust the number
Four things this calculator does not do
Each one would change your figure, and each one is left out on purpose rather than guessed at.
What we can't tell you
We cannot tell you what your take-home pay will be. We can tell you what the published rates are and do the arithmetic on the numbers you enter. Four things sit between the two:
- Your tax code. This page assumes M, the main-job code for someone with one job and no student loan. A second job uses a secondary code and is taxed differently. If your code is wrong on your first payslip, you are taxed wrongly until it is fixed, which is worth checking in your first month.
- A student loan. A New Zealand student loan adds a repayment on top of everything here. We have left it out because we could not source the current threshold from Inland Revenue's own page, and we do not publish a figure we have not read at the source. Most people arriving from overseas do not have one. If you do, use Inland Revenue's calculator instead of this page.
- Tax credits and Working for Families. The independent earner tax credit, Working for Families and the rest turn on your household, your children and your partner's income, not just your pay. Working any of them out for a particular person is advice, and we are not licensed to give it.
- Your visa. Whether you may work here at all, and for how many hours, is set by the conditions printed on your own visa, not by this page. Immigration New Zealand publishes those conditions at immigration.govt.nz. The same goes for KiwiSaver: membership is for people entitled to live here indefinitely.
- Anything that is not salary or wages. Contracting, self-employment, schedular payments, bonuses paid in a lump, a car or a phone provided by your employer. All of them are taxed on their own rules.
Inland Revenue's own PAYE calculator handles the cases this one does not, at ird.govt.nz. If your situation is complicated, a chartered accountant is the person to ask, not us.
The rates behind the number
Where each deduction comes from
New Zealand income tax is stepped, so a pay rise is never taxed at one flat rate. Only the part of your pay inside a band is taxed at that band's rate. Sourced
The ACC earners' levy
Everyone who earns wages pays this. It funds cover for injuries that happen away from work, and it is taken out of your pay alongside PAYE, which is why a payslip rarely shows it on its own line. It is charged on your earnings up to a cap, so above that cap it stops growing.
KiwiSaver
KiwiSaver is the one deduction here that is not a tax. It goes into a retirement account in the member's name, invested, so the balance can fall as well as rise, and in most cases it cannot be withdrawn before 65. Inland Revenue lists the limited grounds for taking it out earlier, including a first home and permanent emigration, each with its own conditions, and the current list is at ird.govt.nz. Whether to be in it, and at what rate, is a decision about your money. We are not licensed to advise on it. A financial adviser licensed in New Zealand can.