Salary Sacrifice Calculator

How salary sacrifice to super works

Salary sacrificing means agreeing with your employer to redirect part of your pre-tax salary into your super fund. Instead of that money being taxed at your marginal rate, which reaches 47% including the Medicare levy, it is taxed at 15% on the way into super. The saving is the gap between those two rates, so it is worth more the higher your income.

The arrangement has to be made before you earn the money. You cannot sacrifice salary you have already been paid, which is why this is a decision for the start of a year or a pay period rather than something to sort out in June.

What the saving is worth at your income

Marginal rates include the Medicare levy and the withdrawal of the low income tax offset, calculated on the FY2026-27 tables. The saving is tax deferred, not tax avoided: the money is preserved in super until you can access it.

The two real costs

Your take-home drops immediately. Sacrificing $10,000 on $100,000 does not cost you $10,000 of take-home, because you were never going to keep all of it, but it does cost you the after-tax portion. The calculator above shows both figures side by side so you can see the actual hit to your pay packet before you commit.

The money is locked away. Super is preserved until you meet a condition of release, which for most people now means age 60. Money you might need for a deposit, a car, or a gap between jobs should not go in. This is the trade that makes salary sacrifice unsuitable for people with no accessible savings, regardless of how good the tax arithmetic looks.

The cap, and carrying forward unused cap

The concessional contributions cap is $32,500 for FY2026-27, up from $30,000, and your employer's compulsory super counts toward it. On $100,000 the $12,000 of guarantee leaves roughly $20,500 of room to sacrifice.

Exceed the cap and the excess is added back to your taxable income, taxed at your marginal rate with an interest charge, which wipes out the benefit. Because your employer's contributions can change through the year, leaving a small buffer rather than sacrificing right up to the cap is the safer setting.

If your total super balance was below $500,000 at the previous 30 June, unused cap from the past five years can be carried forward into one year. This is the mechanism that makes a large one-off contribution work after a low-income year, a period of parental leave, or a capital gain.

Source: ATO, contributions caps. Checked 21 August 2026. TaxSnap is a calculator, not a tax agent: see the disclaimer and where every figure comes from.

It does not reduce your HECS or HELP repayment

This is the most expensive misunderstanding on this page. Salary sacrifice lowers your taxable income, so people reasonably assume it lowers their study loan repayment too. It does not. Reportable superannuation contributions are added back when the ATO works out repayment income, precisely to stop sacrificing being used to avoid repayments.

So sacrificing $10,000 saves you income tax and the Medicare levy on that amount, but your HECS repayment is calculated as though you never sacrificed it. Anyone budgeting on the assumption that both fall together will be short at tax time. Run your pre-sacrifice income through the HECS and HELP calculator for the true repayment.

Division 293 above $250,000

If your income plus your concessional contributions exceeds $250,000, an extra 15% tax applies to the contributions above that threshold, taking them from 15% to 30%. The ATO assesses it separately and sends you a notice, which surprises people the first time.

30% is still below the 47% top marginal rate including the Medicare levy, so sacrificing usually remains worthwhile at that income. The advantage is roughly halved, though, which changes how it compares against paying down a mortgage or investing outside super. The full guide works through the trade-off.

Salary sacrifice against a personal deductible contribution

There are two routes to the same 15% outcome. Salary sacrifice is arranged with your employer in advance and comes out of pre-tax pay. A personal deductible contribution is money you pay into super yourself from your after-tax account, then claim as a deduction in your return after lodging a notice of intent with your fund and receiving its acknowledgement.

Sacrifice suits a steady salary and spreads the effect across the year. Personal contributions suit variable income, contractors, and anyone who wants to decide the amount once they know what the year actually looked like. Both count toward the same $32,500 cap. The personal route has one hard trap: miss the notice of intent, or lodge it after you have already filed your return or moved the money, and the deduction is gone.

What else it affects

Salary sacrificing changes more than your tax bill, because several other systems use a measure of income that adds reportable super contributions back:

• It cannot reduce your super guarantee. Since 1 January 2020 your employer must calculate the guarantee on your pre-sacrifice salary, so sacrificing can no longer be used to cut the compulsory contribution.
• Family assistance and child support use adjusted taxable income, which adds reportable super contributions back. Sacrificing does not increase family payments.
• The private health insurance rebate and the Medicare levy surcharge use income for surcharge purposes, which also adds them back.

The honest summary is that salary sacrifice reliably saves income tax and the Medicare levy on the sacrificed amount, and reliably does nothing for anything assessed on adjusted or repayment income.

Frequently Asked Questions