What reaches your bank account
What comes off an advertised salary in New Zealand and Australia.
What this figure does not include
What will move your real pay.
Your first year is not a full year
If you arrive in November you earn part of a tax year, not all of one. Annualising overstates the tax you will pay, sometimes by thousands. This tool assumes a full year in the country, so treat your arrival year as a separate question and ask us or an accountant about it.
Student loans and study debt
A New Zealand student loan is repaid through PAYE above a threshold. An Australian HECS-HELP debt is collected the same way, and follows you even if you took it out years ago. Neither is included here, and either will reduce what lands.
Tax codes and residency in year one
Your New Zealand tax code depends on your circumstances, and getting it wrong is the most common cause of a surprise bill. In Australia, whether you count as a resident for tax purposes in your first year changes the rates entirely.
The Medicare levy surcharge
Australian earners above a threshold without private hospital cover pay an additional surcharge on top of the 2% levy. For a full-time clinical salary that is a live question, and it is usually cheaper to hold the cover than to pay the surcharge.
Everything that is not base salary
Penal rates, overtime, on-call and availability allowances, higher duties and salary sacrifice all change the number. In New Zealand much of this is set by the collective agreement covering your role rather than by negotiation.
Family payments and credits
Working for Families in New Zealand and the family payments in Australia can make a material difference to a household with children, and neither shows up in a salary calculation.
Every rate here has a date on it
A calculator on a website does not update itself. Ours holds each figure with the date it took effect and the official page it came from, and stops answering once it is due for review rather than quietly serving a stale number.
That matters more than it sounds. In the year to September 2026 New Zealand’s income tax brackets did not move at all, while the ACC earner’s levy rose from 1.67% to 1.75% and the KiwiSaver minimum went from 3% to 3.5%. Australia’s second tax bracket fell from 16c to 15c. The headline rates are the ones everybody checks. The quiet ones are what make a calculator wrong.
Where a future rate is already published, it is loaded with its own start date and takes over on the day. ACC has published the 2027-28 levy, so this tool will use it from 1 April 2027 without anybody touching it.