Superannuation Calculator Australia

The Super Guarantee rate is 12.0% for FY 2026-27, 12.0% for FY 2025-26, 11.5% for FY 2024-25. Twelve per cent is the final scheduled increase: the ladder finished climbing on 1 July 2025 and no further rise is legislated. The rate is the same for FY 2026-27 and FY 2025-26, so the year you pick on this page changes the earnings base and the contribution deadline rather than the percentage.

From 1 July 2026 the SG is calculated on Qualifying Earnings rather than Ordinary Time Earnings. The change that bites is commissions: under OTE, a commission paid solely for work outside ordinary hours was not in the base, and under QE every commission is. Overtime, expense and tool allowances and paid parental leave stay out of the base under both. Salary sacrificed super is in the base under both and is not a Payday Super change: the integrity measure that stopped sacrifice shrinking the SG base applies to quarters beginning on or after 1 January 2020. This calculator switches base with the financial year you select, so FY 2024-25 and FY 2025-26 are answered on OTE.

It is the ceiling on the earnings an employer has to pay SG on. FY 2026-27, $270,830 a year; FY 2025-26, $62,500 a quarter ($250,000 across four even quarters); FY 2024-25, $65,070 a quarter ($260,280 across four even quarters). For FY 2026-27 the ATO publishes one annual figure and no quarterly one, because Payday Super removed the quarterly rhythm the old cap assumed. The base is a running year-to-date test, not a discount on every pay: full SG is owed on each payday until the employee's year-to-date earnings reach the base, and nothing is owed after that.

From 1 July 2026, super must be received by the employee's fund within 7 business days of each payday. A new employee's first contribution, or a contribution to a fund you have not paid before, gets 20 business days. Up to the quarter that ended 30 June 2026 the deadlines were quarterly: 28 October, 28 January, 28 April and 28 July. Received, not sent, is the test in both regimes, so allow clearing house time inside the window. A public holiday that applies across a whole state or territory is excluded nationally from the business day count.

Yes. Since 1 July 2022 there is no minimum earnings threshold, so SG is generally payable for every employee regardless of how little they earn, part-time and casual included. A few narrow exemptions remain: workers under 18 who work 30 hours or less a week, people paid for private or domestic work such as a nanny or a gardener for 30 hours or less a week, and non-resident employees paid for work performed outside Australia. Check the ATO guidance on working out if you have to pay super for the full list.

The concessional (before tax) cap is $32,500 for FY 2026-27, $30,000 for FY 2025-26, $30,000 for FY 2024-25. It is the employee's cap, not the employer's, and it counts everything that goes in before tax across every fund: employer SG, salary sacrifice and personal contributions the individual claims a deduction for. Going over it does not void the contribution. The excess is added to the individual's assessable income and taxed at their marginal rate, less a 15% tax offset for the tax the fund has already paid on it, and the separate excess concessional contributions charge was removed from 1 July 2021. The individual can also elect to have the excess released from the fund.

Preservation age is the age you can generally start accessing your super, provided you have also met a condition of release such as retiring. For everyone born on or after 1 July 1964 it is 60. Getting at super earlier is limited to specific grounds, for example severe financial hardship or specified compassionate grounds. This calculator works out what an employer owes, not what a fund will be worth at retirement.

Two reasons, and only one of them is rounding. Rounding: SG is a percentage, so a fortnightly contribution usually lands on a fraction of a cent that has to be resolved somewhere. Every figure on this page is given to the cent for that reason, because under Payday Super a shortfall is a shortfall and there is no de minimis. The larger reason is the maximum contribution base of $270,830: it is a year-to-date ceiling, so once an employee's earnings pass it mid-year the contributions stop rather than shrinking, and 26 equal pays never described that year correctly.

Under Payday Super the SG obligation attaches to each payday, so a 27th fortnight in a financial year creates a 27th contribution and the year's total genuinely exceeds the annual salary times the SG rate. That is the right answer, not an error to correct: the employee was paid 27 times and SG is owed on each of those payments. The only ceiling is the maximum contribution base, which applies to year-to-date earnings and does not care how many pay runs produced them. Set your calendar from the pay dates rather than from a divided annual figure.

Generally no. Overtime is not ordinary time earnings and it is not qualifying earnings, so SG is not payable on it. Two traps sit behind that. Where the hours are not genuinely overtime, for example an annualised or all-inclusive salary with no separately identifiable overtime component, the whole amount is usually in the base. And an allowance paid for ordinary hours is in the base even though an expense reimbursement or a tool allowance is not. Enter only the ordinary hours part of pay in this calculator.

Often, yes. Section 12(3) of the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 extends the meaning of employee to a person engaged under a contract that is wholly or principally for their labour, so a sole trader you engage for their own work can be entitled to SG even with an ABN and an invoice. It turns on the contract and the work, not on the paperwork, and the ATO publishes a decision tool for it. If SG is owed on the labour component, use this calculator on that amount.

You become liable for the super guarantee charge, and it is deliberately worse than paying on time. It is worked out on a wider earnings base than the contribution you missed, it adds an interest component and an administrative component, and from 1 July 2026 it is assessed against a single missed payday rather than a missed quarter, so the exposure now arrives with every pay run. This calculator does not compute the charge, and the components changed with Payday Super, so use the ATO's current Payday Super guidance rather than a pre-2026 SGC worksheet.

Not since 1 January 2020. Before then an employer could count a sacrificed amount toward its own SG obligation and could work SG out on the reduced salary, which meant an employee sacrificing into super could quietly cut the employer contribution they were entitled to. The integrity measure closed both for quarters beginning on or after 1 January 2020. It is worth stating plainly because it is often described as a Payday Super change: it is not, it is six and a half years older, and an employer who believes otherwise will conclude they were allowed to underpay for FY 2024-25 and FY 2025-26.

The rates, the maximum contribution base and the concessional cap come from the same typed rate pack the OneBookPlus payroll engine reads, so the arithmetic matches. Four things are modelled and worth knowing about. Public holidays are not deducted from the business day count, so a deadline it shows can be one or two days earlier than the law allows, which is the safe direction to be wrong in. For FY 2024-25 and FY 2025-26 the quarterly maximum contribution base is applied as four even quarters, which is only exact where earnings are even. The multi-employee total assumes every employee earns the same. And it works one employee's pay at a time from figures you type, not from year-to-date payroll records, so it cannot see a bonus quarter or a mid-year start.