Payroll tax isn’t one calculation, it’s eight, one per state and territory, each with its own threshold, rate, and rules for tapering that threshold away as your wages grow.
Pay staff in more than one state and it gets harder still: the threshold isn’t per state, it’s shared across your whole business and split proportionally to where you paid those wages.
Enter what you paid in each state below and this calculator works out what you owe for the month, using the current rate, threshold, regional discount, and levy settings for NSW, VIC, QLA, SA, WA, TAS, NT, and the ACT, and shows you the full working, not just the final number.
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Payroll tax is a state tax, not a federal one. Every state and territory sets its own threshold and its own rate, so a business paying staff in three states has three separate calculations to do, not one. This calculator does all of them at once, for a single month, and shows the working behind the answer.
Enter every state you pay wages in, even the small ones, leaving one out overstates the threshold the others receive and understates your tax. Use the month wages were paid, not the month they were worked, since payroll tax follows the pay date. Include the full taxable value of wages, which is more than base pay: superannuation contributions, allowances, bonuses, commissions, directors fees, termination payments, and the grossed-up value of fringe benefits are generally all taxable wages. And leave out exempt payments before entering your totals (see below), this calculator doesn’t strip them out for you.
If your business is grouped with related entities through common ownership, common employees, shared control, or a tracing interest, the group shares one threshold between every member. This calculator treats you as a single, ungrouped employer, if you’re grouped, your real liability will usually be higher than the figure it shows.
These are the current standard rates and thresholds this calculator uses. The monthly threshold shows how the annual figure is prorated for the month, which is how each state works out your monthly liability.
Rates and thresholds change, and each state revenue office is the only authority on your actual obligation.
Payroll tax is a state and territory tax on the wages you pay as an employer. It’s often confused with PAYG withholding, but the two are unrelated: PAYG withholding is a federal tax you take out of an employee’s pay and send to the ATO on their behalf, while payroll tax is a direct cost to your business, calculated on your total wages bill and paid to a state revenue office.
You only pay it once your wages rise above a threshold, small employers rarely encounter it, and growing employers often get caught by surprise the moment their Australian wages cross that line. Crossing it obliges you to register in that state, lodge monthly, and pay.
The step most employers get wrong is the shared threshold. Each state measures your total Australian wages, not just what you paid in that state,
then hands you a proportional slice of its threshold based on where those wages were paid.
A business with $200,000 of monthly wages split evenly across four states doesn’t get four full thresholds, it gets a quarter of each state’s thresholds.
On top of that, most states taper the threshold away as wages grow and remove it altogether once wages pass an upper limit.
Several states also stack levies on top of the headline rate once a business gets large enough, such as the Victorian and Queensland mental health levies and the ACT’s surcharge arrangements.
This calculator shows each of these on its own line so you can see exactly where the number came from.
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Taxable wages are broader than base salary. They generally include ordinary wages, overtime, penalty rates, allowances, bonuses and commissions, directors fees, superannuation contributions, the grossed-up value of fringe benefits, shares and options, and the taxable portion of termination payments. Contractor payments can also be caught, depending on the contract provisions in each state.
The following are exempt in every Australian state and territory, and should be excluded before you enter your totals above:
Wages paid for maternity, paternity, or adoption leave, normally capped at 14 weeks of pay. Annual leave or long service leave taken around a birth is still taxable.
Payments made to an employee while off work on workers compensation. Wages for hours actually worked, such as light duties, are still taxable.
Leave paid to an employee serving in the Defence Force reserves.
Leave paid to a volunteer attending an emergency call-out, such as a fire brigade or State Emergency Service.
Other exemptions, rebates, and concessions (apprentice and trainee rebates, charitable exemptions, regional concessions), differ from state to state. Check with the revenue office in each state you page wages in.
If your business is related to other businesses through common ownership, common employees, shared control, or a tracing interest, the revenue office treats you as a single group for payroll tax. The group shares one threshold between every member, and one member is nominated to claim it. Grouping is one of the most common reasons as an assessment comes back higher than expected.
Most employers lodge and pay monthly, generally within seven days after the end of the month, followed by an annual reconciliation after 30 June. Payroll tax follows the month wages are paid, not the month they were worked, a pay run covering hours worked in one month but paid in the next belongs to the month it was paid.
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Microkeeper reads the wages straight out of your processed pay runs, splits them by the state each employee worked in, applies your exempt payment lines automatically, and produces a payroll tax report for every state you operate in, no manual re-entry, no stripping out exempt payment by hand.
It’s the same calculation engine behind the free tool above, running on your real payroll data instead of numbers you type in. If a pay run includes something unusual, an exempt allowance (a workers compensation payment), you can exclude it directly from the calculation, rather than adjusting a total before you enter it anywhere.
The updated payroll tax report is available now for Enterprise and Standard plans, under your payroll reports.
See how it fits alongside award interpretation, Single Touch Payroll, and superannuation processing in Microkeeper’s payroll software.
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