Australian Tax Refund Calculator

Start with everything you were paid, subtract your deductions to get taxable income, then apply the ATO resident rates to that figure. Reduce the result by any offsets you qualify for, such as the Low Income Tax Offset. Then ADD the Medicare levy, the Medicare levy surcharge if it applies, and any compulsory study loan repayment: those three are added to your tax, never offset against it. The total is your tax for the year. Subtract it from the PAYG tax withheld plus any PAYG instalments you paid, and a positive answer is your refund while a negative one is a bill.

On a straightforward salary it lands within a few dollars of an assessment, because the brackets, the offset, the levy, the surcharge tiers and the study loan bands all come from the same rate pack our payroll engine uses. It is worth knowing what it leaves out. It does not model the seniors and pensioners tax offset, the private health insurance rebate, franking credits, foreign income tax offsets, capital gains or the 50% discount, an employment termination payment, a part-year Medicare exemption, or a year in which you held hospital cover for only part of the time. If any of those apply, your assessment will differ.

The ATO works from prefilled data: every employer income statement, bank interest, dividends, managed fund distributions, your health fund membership and your spouse's details. This page only knows what you typed into it. The three gaps that show up most often are income you have not entered, a spouse or dependants changing which Medicare thresholds apply to you, and an offset the ATO applies that this page does not model. Treat the ATO's figure as the answer and this one as a sanity check before you lodge.

It often does, and almost nobody expects it. A compulsory study loan repayment is added to your tax for the year rather than offset against it, and it is worked out on repayment income: taxable income plus reportable fringe benefits, reportable employer super contributions and net investment losses. Employers withhold a separate study loan amount each pay, but if your income rose during the year, if you salary sacrifice, or if you have a second job that does not know about the first, the amount withheld can fall well short of the annual repayment. Switch the study loan control on to see the size of it on your own numbers.

Claim the tax-free threshold from one employer only, normally the one that pays you the most. The second employer then withholds from the first dollar. People who claim it from both effectively get $18,200 taxed at nil twice during the year and almost always owe money when they lodge. To model two jobs here, add both salaries together in Total salary and wages and add both withheld amounts together in Tax withheld by your employer.

Weekly payers hit 53 pay days in some financial years and fortnightly payers hit 27. The ATO withholding formulas are built on 52 and 26 pays, so the extra pay day is withheld at the same per-pay rate while pushing your annual income into a higher band, and the shortfall usually lands somewhere between one and several hundred dollars. The ATO publishes a small additional amount an employee can ask their employer to withhold in those years, which is the way to stop it happening again rather than after the fact.

Because of the low-income reduction. For FY 2025-26 a single person pays no levy at all up to $28,011 of taxable income, then a shaded levy of ten cents in each dollar above that, until the full 2% takes over at $35,013. A family is measured on combined taxable income against $47,238, lifted by $4,338 for each dependent child. This page applies the reduction automatically, which is why the levy row can read nil while the income tax row does not. The thresholds for FY 2026-27 have not been re-indexed yet, so the page uses the last legislated figures and says so.

No. The rebate is a separate amount, taken either as a reduced premium through the year or claimed back in your return, and it is income tested against the same tiers as the surcharge. All this page decides is whether the Medicare levy surcharge applies to you. Worth knowing: if you took the rebate as a reduced premium and your income turned out higher than the tier you nominated to your fund, you can owe part of it back at lodgement, which is a common reason a refund arrives smaller than the estimate.

Sole traders have no employer withholding, so a refund arises only where the PAYG instalments you paid during the year exceed your final tax. Add your net business profit (business income less business expenses) to any other income, subtract personal deductions to get taxable income, then apply the resident rates, the offset, the Medicare levy and any study loan repayment. Enter the instalments in the PAYG instalments paid field above and leave the employer withholding at zero: the estimate runs on income alone, so you do not need a withholding figure to get an answer.

The ATO's published service standard is two weeks for a return lodged electronically and up to 50 business days for a paper return. Returns lodged in the first days of July often wait regardless, because employers have until mid to late July to finalise income statements and banks, health funds and share registries report on their own timetable. A refund can also be held while the ATO checks a claim, or offset against another debt you owe, including a debt on hold.

For FY 2026-27 the most common reason is the rate cut itself. The rate on income between $18,201 and $45,000 fell from 16% to 15% on 1 July 2026, and the withholding tables fell with it, so less tax came out of your pay during the year and there is less over-withholding to hand back. A smaller refund alongside a slightly bigger pay packet is the same money arriving earlier. The other usual causes are fewer deductions than last year, a pay rise part way through the year that withholding lagged, and a study loan repayment starting for the first time.

The test is that you spent the money yourself, it relates directly to earning your income, and you have a record of it. Common claims are working from home, car and travel between work sites, compulsory or protective uniforms and their laundry, tools and equipment, the work share of phone and internet, self-education that relates to your current job, union fees and professional subscriptions, income protection premiums taken outside super, the cost of managing your tax affairs, and gifts to a deductible gift recipient. Travel between home and a regular workplace is not deductible, and neither is conventional clothing however smart your employer expects it to be.

Under the ATO's fixed-rate method in PCG 2023/1 you claim a set rate for each hour worked from home, covering electricity, gas, phone, internet, stationery and computer consumables in one figure. The rate is 70 cents an hour for FY 2024-25 and FY 2025-26; it was 67 cents for FY 2022-23 and FY 2023-24, and no rate has been published for FY 2026-27 yet, so check before you rely on one. You need a record of every hour actually worked from home across the whole year, not an estimate or a four-week sample. Depreciation of furniture and equipment sits outside the rate and is claimed separately, and you cannot claim phone or internet again on top of it.

The usual causes, roughly in order: two employers each applying the tax-free threshold; income with no tax taken out of it, such as interest, dividends, rent or a side business; a study loan repayment that withholding did not keep up with; a Medicare levy surcharge you did not know applied because you had no hospital cover; and a capital gain on shares, crypto or an investment property. This page does not model capital gains, so put a gain through our capital gains tax calculator instead of entering it as other income, because entering it here taxes the whole gain with no 50% discount and overstates the bill.

You have to lodge if you had any tax withheld from a payment during the year, even a few dollars of bank interest withholding, or if your taxable income was above the $18,200 tax-free threshold. You also have to lodge if you are leaving Australia permanently, if you carried on a business, if you made a capital loss you want to carry forward, or if you received certain government payments. If none of that applies, you still need to tell the ATO by lodging a non-lodgement advice, because silence looks the same to them as a missing return.