Salary Sacrifice Super Calculator AU 2025-26

What this calculator works out

This calculator compares two scenarios for an Australian resident employee in FY2025-26: take-home pay and super balance growth without salary sacrifice, and the same after redirecting a chosen amount of pre-tax salary into super. It applies the resident individual tax rates, the 2% Medicare Levy, the 15% contributions tax inside the fund, the A$30,000 concessional contributions cap with employer Super Guarantee at 12% counted in, the marginal-rate add-back on excess concessional contributions, and the Division 293 trigger at A$250,000 of Division 293 income. The output is the net dollars actually added to super, the cash reduction in take-home pay and the effective tax saving per dollar sacrificed.

The point of the tool is to make the trade-off concrete. A 30%-bracket earner who sacrifices A$5,000 typically sees an effective saving close to 17 cents in the dollar; a 45%-bracket earner can see closer to 30 cents in the dollar — until Division 293 lifts the contributions tax on the relevant slice from 15% to 30%, or the cap forces excess contributions back onto assessable income. The calculator surfaces those edges so a salary sacrifice plan is sized against the cap and Division 293 rather than only the headline marginal rate.

Where the formula comes from

The settings used are the ATO and ASIC MoneySmart figures for FY2025-26:

Setting	FY2025-26 value
Resident tax-free threshold	A$18,200
16% bracket	A$18,201 – A$45,000
30% bracket	A$45,001 – A$135,000
37% bracket	A$135,001 – A$190,000
45% bracket	A$190,001 +
Medicare Levy (simple)	2%
Super Guarantee rate	12%
Concessional contributions cap	A$30,000
Super contributions tax	15%
Division 293 threshold	A$250,000
Division 293 rate	15% (extra)

The calculation runs in this order:

1. Personal income tax on the baseline (no-sacrifice) and post-sacrifice taxable incomes using the resident schedule above, plus a flat 2% Medicare Levy on each.
2. Take-home pay for each scenario = taxable income − income tax − Medicare Levy. The take-home reduction is the difference between the two.
3. Contributions tax = 15% × salary sacrificed (charged inside the fund).
4. Total concessional contributions = Super Guarantee (12% × gross) + sacrifice + other deductible contributions. Excess over A$30,000 is added back to assessable income at marginal rates (the calculator uses the post-sacrifice marginal rate plus 2% Medicare Levy as a simplified proxy for the ATO's add-back-and-15%-offset mechanism).
5. Division 293 income = post-sacrifice taxable income + total concessional contributions. If this exceeds A$250,000, an extra 15% applies to the lesser of the excess or the low-tax contributions, where low-tax contributions are capped at the concessional cap.
6. Net super addition = sacrifice − contributions tax − Division 293.
7. Total tax saving = baseline total tax − sacrifice total tax − contributions tax − Division 293 − excess penalty. Divided by the sacrifice amount this gives the effective benefit ratio per dollar sacrificed.

The 12% Super Guarantee is the headline rate for FY2025-26. The maximum contribution base that limits Super Guarantee on income above a quarterly threshold is not modelled here — for very high earners the actual employer Super Guarantee on the payslip can be lower than 12% × full gross.

How to read the inputs

• Gross salary excl. super — annual salary before tax, excluding the employer Super Guarantee. Use the cash-salary line of an employment contract or the gross figure on the income statement, not the package figure that includes Super Guarantee.
• Salary sacrifice per year — the pre-tax dollars redirected from salary into super. The amount is excluded from assessable income and instead taxed inside the fund at 15%.
• Age — informational only for the FY2025-26 calculation; Super Guarantee and the concessional cap apply equally to most ages. Members aged 67–74 face additional work test rules for personal deductible contributions, which sit outside this calculator.
• Other concessional contributions — personal deductible contributions or any other employer contributions on top of the standard Super Guarantee. The cap arithmetic adds these to Super Guarantee and salary sacrifice.

Worked examples

1. 30%-bracket earner, A$80,000 + A$10,000 sacrifice. Baseline take-home is around A$63,612. Sacrificing A$10,000 reduces take-home to roughly A$56,812 (a A$6,800 cut), pays A$1,500 in contributions tax inside the fund, and adds A$8,500 net to super. Total concessional contributions are A$19,600 (well under cap), there is no Division 293, and the typical total tax saving for the year is around A$1,700 — about 17 cents in the dollar.

2. Top-bracket earner, A$260,000 + A$20,000 sacrifice. Headline marginal rate 47% (45% + 2% Medicare). Super Guarantee alone is A$31,200, so total concessional contributions of A$51,200 push A$21,200 above the A$30,000 cap. The excess penalty applied at 47% is around A$9,964. Division 293 fires (Division 293 income of A$291,200 vs A$250,000 threshold) at A$4,500. The combined effect is that the typical bill is around A$8,064 higher with the sacrifice than without — a useful warning that high earners with Super Guarantee already at or above the cap usually cannot tax-effectively sacrifice on top.

3. Cap-just-exceeded, A$100,000 + A$20,000 sacrifice. Super Guarantee A$12,000 plus A$20,000 sacrifice equals A$32,000, A$2,000 above the cap. The excess attracts a marginal-rate add-back at roughly 32% (around A$640). Below the Division 293 threshold, so no extra 15%. The total tax saving is still positive at around A$2,760, but smaller than it would have been if the sacrifice had been sized to exactly A$18,000 to hit the cap without going over.

4. Cap exactly hit, A$200,000 + A$6,000 sacrifice. Super Guarantee A$24,000 plus A$6,000 sacrifice equals A$30,000 — exactly the cap. No excess, no Division 293 (Division 293 income A$224,000), and the sacrifice slice is taxed at the marginal 47% rate normally vs the 15% contributions tax — a 32-cent gap. The typical total tax saving is around A$1,920, roughly 32 cents per dollar sacrificed.

5. Low income, A$40,000 + A$5,000 sacrifice. Marginal rate 16% plus 2% Medicare = 18%. Sacrificing converts the slice from a personal 18% tax to a fund 15% tax — a saving of just 3 cents in the dollar before the Low Income Super Tax Offset is considered. The typical total tax saving is around A$150. For very low incomes the Low Income Super Tax Offset (up to A$500, paid by the ATO into the super fund for incomes under A$37,000) materially changes the comparison, but it is paid separately and is not included here.

Common pitfalls

• Super Guarantee already eats the cap. At gross salary of A$250,000 the 12% Super Guarantee is A$30,000 — the full cap with zero headroom for salary sacrifice. Anyone earning above that level who sacrifices on top is creating excess concessional contributions and possibly Division 293 by the same act. Check the cap headroom before deciding the sacrifice amount.
• The cap covers the financial year, not the calendar year. The Australian financial year runs 1 July to 30 June. A salary sacrifice arrangement that started midway through the year leaves part of the cap unused; carry-forward of unused cap from the prior five years is allowed only if your total super balance was under A$500,000 on 30 June of the prior year, which this calculator does not model.
• Excess contributions are not lost — they are taxed differently. Excess concessional contributions stay in the fund. They are added to assessable income for the year and taxed at marginal rates with a 15% offset for the contributions tax already paid; the calculator uses a simplified marginal-rate proxy that slightly overstates the bill in some cases. The fund's caps and any election to release the excess are separate decisions.
• Division 293 also covers reportable fringe benefits and net investment loss. This calculator uses the simplified definition of Division 293 income as taxable income plus concessional contributions. A negatively geared investor or someone with packaged fringe benefits should also model the dedicated Division 293 calculator linked below for the full income definition.
• Salary sacrifice does not reduce the Super Guarantee base. Since 1 January 2020, an employer must pay Super Guarantee on the pre-sacrifice ordinary time earnings, so sacrificing into super does not lower the employer's Super Guarantee obligation. Older arrangements that capped Super Guarantee at the post-sacrifice salary are no longer valid.
• Fortnightly tax tables run on the post-sacrifice salary. Once a salary sacrifice arrangement is in place the employer withholds PAYG on the lower cash salary, so the tax saving usually shows up in fortnightly cash flow rather than as an end-of-year refund. The take-home reduction figure here is the annualised version of that effect.

Related calculators

• Division 293 extra super tax calculator — full Division 293 model including reportable fringe benefits and net investment loss; useful for high-earning investors and packaged-benefit holders.
• HECS-HELP repayment calculator — HECS-HELP repayment income (HRI) is calculated on a similar expanded base, so a salary sacrifice plan that crosses Division 293 often interacts with the top HELP rate in the same year.
• Medicare Levy Surcharge calculator — Medicare Levy Surcharge income uses an expanded definition that includes salary-sacrificed contributions; high-income earners salary sacrificing into super should pair this calculator with that one before deciding.
• Working Holiday Maker tax calculator — visa 417 / 462 holders are taxed on a different schedule and do not face the resident concessional cap dynamics modelled here.
• NSW stamp duty calculator — useful as a cash-flow companion when a high-income salary sacrifice plan is competing with an upfront property purchase in the same financial year.

Source: ATO — Tax rates for Australian residents · ATO — Medicare Levy · ATO — Super Guarantee · ATO — Concessional contributions cap · ATO — Excess concessional contributions · ATO — Division 293 tax · ASIC MoneySmart — Super contributions.