Sources and How We Verify

Last updated: 21 August 2026

Why this page exists

A tax figure without a source and a date is close to useless. Rates change on 1 July, two financial years are live at any moment, and a great deal of Australian tax content online was written once and never revisited. This page exists so you can check our working rather than take it on trust.

Every rate below was read directly from the ATO page linked beside it. Not from another calculator, not from a summary article, not from memory.

Every figure on this site

WhatValue usedSourceLast checked
Resident income tax ratesFY2026-27: nil to $18,200, 15%, 30%, 37%, 45%Tax rates for Australian residents21 August 2026
Resident income tax ratesFY2025-26: nil to $18,200, 16%, 30%, 37%, 45%Tax rates for Australian residents21 August 2026
Foreign resident rates30% to $135,000, then 37% and 45%. No tax-free threshold, no Medicare levyTax rates for foreign residents21 August 2026
Working holiday maker rates15% to $45,000, then resident rates. No Medicare levyTax rates for working holiday makers21 August 2026
Low income tax offset (LITO)Up to $700. Full below $37,500, then withdrawn at 5c, then 1.5c from $45,000, gone at $66,667. Reduces tax payable to nil at most and is never refundedATO, Low income tax offset21 August 2026
Medicare levy2%. Singles: nil at or below $28,011, phasing in to full rate at $35,013Medicare levy reduction for low-income earners21 August 2026
Medicare levy surchargeFY2026-27 singles: $105,000 / $123,000 / $164,000 at 1%, 1.25%, 1.5%Medicare levy surcharge income, thresholds and rates21 August 2026
HECS/HELP repaymentFY2026-27: nil below $69,528, then 15c and 17c marginal bands, 10% of total above $186,050Study and training loan repayment thresholds and rates21 August 2026
Super guarantee12% for FY2026-27. Payday Super applies from 1 July 2026Key superannuation rates and thresholds: super guarantee21 August 2026
Concessional contributions cap$32,500 for FY2026-27, up from $30,000Key superannuation rates and thresholds: contributions caps21 August 2026
Maximum contribution base$270,830 a year for FY2026-27, replacing the former quarterly figureKey superannuation rates and thresholds: super guarantee21 August 2026
Working from home fixed rate70c per hour for FY2025-26. Not yet published for FY2026-27Working from home expenses: fixed rate method21 August 2026
Cents per kilometre91c for FY2026-27 (89c base plus a one-off 2c uplift), 88c for FY2025-26. Capped at 5,000km per carCents per Kilometre Deduction Rate for Car Expenses 2026 Determination21 August 2026
Written evidence threshold$300 of total work-related claims. At or below it, no receipts required, but the expense must have been incurred and you must be able to explain how you worked it out. Laundry up to $150 counts INSIDE the $300, not on top of itATO, Records you need to keep21 August 2026
Small and hard-to-get expensesIndividual work expenses of $10 or less, up to $200 a year in total, can be recorded in a diary instead of with a receiptATO, Claiming deductions21 August 2026
GST10%. Registration compulsory at $75,000 turnover, within 21 daysRegistering for GST21 August 2026
Tax return due date31 October for self-lodgers. Later via a registered tax agent engaged before that dateLodge your tax return with a registered tax agent21 August 2026
Earnings benchmark: averageFull-time adult ordinary time earnings $2,083.70 a week, about $108,352 a year (May 2026)ABS Average Weekly Earnings, Australia, May 202621 August 2026
Earnings benchmark: medianMedian employee earnings in main job $1,425.00 a week, about $74,100 a year (August 2025). A SEPARATE release: Average Weekly Earnings is mean-only and publishes no medianABS Employee Earnings, August 202521 August 2026

One number on this site is a convention rather than a published rate: where a page converts an annual salary to an hourly figure it assumes a 38-hour week over 52 weeks. There is no legislated standard for this, so if your week is longer or shorter, the hourly figures scale accordingly.

Where the ATO has not published a figure yet

Some FY2026-27 figures do not exist yet, because the ATO publishes them at different times and some only become relevant when returns for the year are lodged in mid-2027. Rather than estimate them, we carry the prior year forward and label it. As at 21 August 2026 that applies to:

  • Foreign resident and working holiday maker tables for FY2026-27. The ATO's published tables run to FY2025-26. The 1 July 2026 change affects only the resident 16% bracket, which appears in neither scale, so carrying them forward is sound, but it is an inference and we flag it as one.
  • Medicare levy low-income thresholds for FY2026-27. The ATO's current published thresholds are the FY2025-26 figures. These are typically indexed and confirmed later in the year, so our low-income results may change slightly once they are.
  • The working from home fixed rate for FY2026-27. Not yet published, which is expected, since the FY2026-27 return is not lodged until after 30 June 2027.

How the calculations are built

The rate tables above live in a single shared file that is used in two places at once: at build time to pre-compute the figures printed in the tables on every page, and in your browser to run the live calculators. That means a printed figure and a calculated figure cannot disagree, because they come from the same code path.

Where we could check our arithmetic against the ATO's own worked examples we did. The HECS/HELP calculation reproduces all three of the ATO's published FY2026-27 repayment examples to the cent.

What we do when something is wrong

We correct it and update the date on this page. If you have found an error, tell us on the contact page with the page and the figure. A wrong number on a tax site is a real-world problem for whoever relies on it, so corrections take priority over everything else.

Not advice

Publishing our sources is not the same as giving advice. Clearway Apps is not a registered tax agent and nothing here accounts for your circumstances. See the full disclaimer.