What super rate should a sole trader aim for in 2026–27?

There is no required rate for yourself. The 12% Super Guarantee is what employers must pay their staff, and it makes a useful benchmark if you want to keep pace with an employee on the same income. The voluntary contribution box on this page lets you try that amount and see the deduction it brings.

Should I think of my income as including super or not?

Nobody adds super on top for you, so every dollar of super comes out of the same income you live on. When you compare yourself with an advertised employee package, check whether it includes super, since a package that does is not as far ahead of your profit as it looks.

What tax rates apply to sole trader profit in 2026–27?

Profit is taxed at the same resident rates as a wage: nothing to $18,200, 15% to $45,000, 30% to $135,000, 37% to $190,000 and 45% beyond, with the 2% Medicare levy added. What changes is timing, because no employer is taking it out as you go.

Can a sole trader get the Low Income Tax Offset?

Yes. It depends on taxable income, not on how you earn it, so a lean year can still attract the full $700 below $37,500, reducing to nothing at $66,667. It is worked out when you lodge.

What replaces PAYG withholding when I work for myself?

PAYG instalments. Once you have lodged a return with business income, the ATO may ask you to pay instalments during the year so tax is not left as one bill at the end. Setting money aside from each invoice until then is the habit this page is built to help with.

Is the $1,000 instant deduction included in this sole trader result?

No. It is a tax-time deduction from 2026–27 that is claimed when you lodge, so it is not part of the calculation here. Your business expenses are a separate matter: enter your income after those expenses if you want the result to reflect them.

Self-employed tax calculator · 2026–27 tax rates

What do you keep after tax as a sole trader?

Enter your income to see tax, Medicare and what is left.

Your income before tax

Quick picks are yearly salaries.

GST Registered

Turnover over $75,000 · Auto-divides by 1.1

Enter your income · GST auto-removed if registered

Take-home pay

Example

$63,880.00a year

Example for $80,000 a year. Enter your income above.

Take home$63,880.00

Income tax$14,520.00

Medicare levy$1,600.00

Super (retirement savings)$9,600.00

Paid by your employer on top of this pay.

Effective tax rate20.15%

Nothing has been taken out yet

Every other calculator on this site begins with money that has already shrunk. A payslip is printed after the fact, so the figure on it is what survived. This page begins somewhere else. The full amount landed, nobody touched it on the way, and the balance you are looking at is the gross figure wearing the clothes of a net one.

That inverts the question. You are not asking what is left after tax. You are asking how much of what is already sitting in the account was never going to be yours. Both land on the same figure. Only one of them has somebody else doing the arithmetic for you, and it is not this one.

Two balances holding one year of work. Only the top one can be read at face value.

The easy part is the part everyone worries about

If you are registered for GST, a slice of every invoice was collected on behalf of the tax office rather than earned. It arrives with the rest and it looks identical in the balance, which is why the calculator strips it out before it starts. Income tax is assessed on what you earned, not on what passed through you.

This is the case people ask about most and it is the one that needs you least. The toggle already knows the proportion and takes it off before anything else happens. The two below have no switch, and they are where the money actually goes missing.

Revenue is not income

There are no fields here for what the work cost you to do. The figure to enter is the profit you expect to keep once those costs are paid, because the calculator taxes whatever you hand it. Give it revenue and it will faithfully tell you to set aside tax on money you spent months ago on tools, insurance and fuel.

Which of those costs count is a conversation between you, your records and your accountant, and it is finished before this page opens. What the page adds is the step after that conversation, which is the one most people skip until the bill turns up.

Super is competing for the same money

On every other page here, super arrives on top of the pay. Somebody else funds it, the take-home line never feels it, and the only thing to work out is whether a quoted figure already includes it. There is nobody on top of you. Anything you put into super comes out of the same pool the tax is coming out of.

That makes it a decision rather than a background fact, which is why the contribution field is on the main screen rather than tucked away. Putting money there is worth doing and it is not free, and the page shows you both halves of that instead of quietly assuming you have already chosen.

The share you set aside has to move

Most people arrive at a rule of thumb in their first year and keep it. The proportion that was right when the work was small will be short once it is not, because the tax here is not a flat cut of the total. It climbs as the total climbs, and nothing tells you when it has climbed past your habit.

Two goes at the calculator make that visible. Enter the year you have just finished, then the year you are hoping for, and compare the shares rather than the totals. The distance between those two shares is what your rule of thumb has to travel, and it arrives as a bill rather than as a warning.

The calendar is a separate problem

Once you are inside the system the tax office collects during the year on a schedule of its own, and this page does not model that schedule. It answers one question properly instead of two vaguely: over a whole year, what share of everything that arrives is not yours to spend.

Open the pay calculator

Worked example: $120,000 of profit with a personal super deduction

A sole trader makes $120,000 in net business income in 2026–27, a figure that already leaves out any GST collected, so the calculator's GST switch stays off. They claim $10,000 of personal super contributions as a deduction and go the whole year without private hospital cover.

Net business income$120,000.00
Personal super contribution claimed-$10,000.00
Taxable income$110,000.00
Income tax$23,520.00
Medicare levy$2,200.00
Surcharge for having no hospital cover$1,100.00
Yours to spend after all three$83,180.00

Nobody holds any of this back as the money comes in. Tax and both levies land as one bill after the return unless the ATO has put you on quarterly instalments, which is why so many sole traders move a slice of every payment into a separate account the day it arrives. The deduction also lowers the income the surcharge is measured on, so it trims that line as well.

Tax and levies at four profit levels with no hospital cover, 2026–27
Net income	Income tax	Medicare levy	Surcharge
$80,000	$14,520.00	$1,600.00	$0.00
$110,000	$23,520.00	$2,200.00	$1,100.00
$140,000	$32,870.00	$2,800.00	$1,750.00
$180,000	$47,670.00	$3,600.00	$2,700.00

ATO pages for sole traders

PAYG instalmentsato.gov.au
How the ATO collects tax on business income during the year once you are in the system.
Medicare levy surchargeato.gov.au
Who pays the surcharge, and which income figure decides whether it applies and at what rate.
Personal super contributionsato.gov.au
Claiming a deduction for contributions you make yourself, including the notice your fund must receive first.
Tax rates for residentsato.gov.au
The brackets applied to the taxable income line.