EasyPayCalc

Casual pay calculator · 2026–27 tax rates

What does your casual rate pay after tax?

Enter your hourly rate and hours to see your take-home pay.

$

Minimum casual rate: $33.05/hr (incl. 25% loading) · Award rates vary by industry (check fairwork.gov.au)

Take-home pay

Example

$1,228.57a week

Example for $40.49 an hour, 38 hours a week. Enter your rate above.

Take home$1,228.57
Income tax$279.28
Medicare levy$30.77
Super (retirement savings)$184.63

Paid by your employer on top of this pay.

Effective tax rate20.15%

All calculators

Pay CalculatorPart-timeWorking HolidayHECS / HELPSelf-EmployedSalary PackageNovated LeaseMortgageCash Flow

Guides

All guides

The rate is the easy part. The year is the hard part

Casual pay is quoted by the hour and lived by the year, and those two things do not line up. An hourly figure describes a week where you were rostered. A year contains weeks where you were not, and nothing in the rate tells you how many of those there will be.

One year, two shapesA permanent yearWeeks workedpaid time awayA casual yearWeeks workedthe spaces are unpaid
The hourly rate describes the blocks. The comparison happens in the spaces between them.

That is the number this page cannot know and you can. Everything else on the screen follows from the hours you type in, so the honest input is the week you would still have in a quiet month, however good your best week looked.

Comparing an offer means comparing two years

Put a casual rate beside a permanent rate and the casual one wins on the hour, every time. The two arrangements are not the same length of year, though, so an hourly contest settles nothing. One of them pays you through the weeks you are away and the other does not.

Run this page with the hours you expect while you are working, then run it again with your realistic quiet stretches taken out of the year. That distance is what the extra in your hourly rate has to make up before the two offers are level.

The typical week that is not typical

This page turns one week into a year, and casual work is the arrangement least likely to hold still. If your hours swing, the annual figure is what the year would look like if the chosen week repeated. Use that shape for planning and expect the real year to come out differently.

Two runs are more honest than one. Enter a quiet week and then a busy week, and read the answer as the range you live between rather than as a single figure. Most people find their real year sits closer to the quiet run than they expected, because the busy weeks are the memorable ones.

What sits outside this page

Enter your hourly rate as it appears on your payslip, with the loading already in it. The calculator does not know your award, so it cannot tell you whether the rate is right, and it does not add overtime or weekend multipliers. Those change specific shifts rather than the shape of the year, which is what this page is for.

Super sits outside the rate too. It is paid on top rather than out of it, so a higher hourly figure carries a larger super contribution with it. That part is not visible in your take-home line and is easy to leave out of the comparison above.

Open the pay calculator

A worked example at the minimum casual rate, 2026–27

Start from the national minimum casual rate for 2026–27, $33.05 an hour with the loading already built in, and a steady 30 hours every week of the year. There is no study loan, no salary sacrifice and no surcharge here, so each line below lines up with a single step the calculator takes.

  1. Gross pay for one week of 30 hours$991.50
  2. Gross pay across 52 weeks$51,558.00
  3. Income tax on that, before any offset$5,987.40
  4. Low income tax offset-$226.63
  5. Income tax once the offset is applied$5,760.77
  6. Medicare levy$1,031.16
  7. Kept over the full year$44,766.07
  8. Kept in an ordinary week$860.89

That weekly figure belongs to a perfectly even roster. Real casual weeks rarely look like that, and because tax is withheld one pay at a time, a short week followed by a long one will produce payslips on either side of it. Over a whole year the total comes back close to this line once your return is assessed.

Minimum casual rate for 2026–27 over three rosters, without a study loan
Hours a weekGross a weekKept a weekShare lost to tax and levy
25 hours$826.25$746.499.7%
30 hours$991.50$860.8913.2%
38 hours$1,255.90$1,036.7117.5%

Where the casual rate and the tax rules are published

  • Minimum wagesfairwork.gov.au

    Fair Work Ombudsman page for the national minimum hourly rate and the casual rate with its loading. The hourly figure in the example comes from here.

  • Casual employeesfairwork.gov.au

    What makes a job casual, and why the loading is paid in place of paid leave.

  • Tax rates for Australian residentsato.gov.au

    The brackets that produce the income tax line before the offset.

  • Low income tax offsetato.gov.au

    How the offset in the fourth line is worked out and where it phases out.

Rates checked with official sources on 15 August 2026.

How we check the numbers

Frequently Asked Questions

A casual rate already has loading baked into it, which makes the annual figure look higher than a permanent salary that pays the same amount of money. That gap is the reason most people arrive here confused, so the questions start with how the number is built. Tax comes second, because loading is ordinary income and gets taxed like the rest of it.

How does this page get from my hourly casual rate to take-home pay?

It turns the hourly rate you enter, loading already included, and your weekly hours into a yearly income, then takes out income tax, the Medicare levy and any study loan repayment. Loading is not added a second time. Super is paid on top by your employer and does not reduce what you take home.

Why does a casual payslip swing so far from this result?

Withholding treats each pay as though you earned that amount every week of the year. A long week gets taxed like a normal week that happened to be big, and a short week the other way, so casual payslips swing more than most. Over a full year those swings largely cancel out once your return is lodged.

Did the 2026–27 rate cut change casual take-home pay?

Yes, for any casual income in the bracket that moved from 16% to 15%. Casual hours often push people across brackets from one year to the next, so compare both years at your usual hours with the Tax Year selector.

How close is this estimate to what a casual worker actually earns?

About as close as your hours are steady. The calculator assumes the same hours every week for a year, and casual work seldom runs like that. Use your average week rather than your best one, and note that deductions and any other income are not included.

What tax rates apply to casual income in 2026–27?

The same resident rates as any other wage, because loading is ordinary income. Nothing is taxed up to $18,200, then 15% applies to $45,000, 30% to $135,000, 37% to $190,000 and 45% above that, with the 2% Medicare levy on top.

Do casual workers get the Low Income Tax Offset?

Yes, if you are a resident for tax purposes. Casual earnings that stay under $37,500 for the year get the full $700 offset, and it tapers away to nothing at $66,667. It is applied when your return is assessed, so there is nothing to claim.

Why is tax taken from casual pay at a different rate each week?

PAYG withholding is worked out on each pay as it arrives, so a bigger pay attracts proportionally more. It is an estimate of the year, not the final bill. If your hours were uneven, the return at the end of the year is where the difference is refunded or collected.

Can a casual worker use the $1,000 instant deduction?

It is a standard deduction for workers, claimed without receipts when you lodge from 2026–27 onward, and being casual makes no difference to that. It lowers taxable income at tax time rather than the tax taken from each pay, which is why the weekly figures here do not show it.