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Australia Stage 3 15% Tax Bracket & Asset Write-Off Calculator (2026-27)
Calculate your tax savings from Australia's July 1, 2026 15% lowest bracket drop and permanent $20,000 instant asset write-off.
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Calculate your Australian wage increase following the Fair Work Commission 2026 Annual Wage Review (effective 1 July 2026). The decision increases Modern Award minimum wages by 4.75% and sets the National Minimum Wage at $26.44 per hour ($1,004.90 for a 38-hour week). Calculate your new hourly rate, weekly gross earnings, and 25% casual loading component.
The Fair Work Commission's 2026 Annual Wage Review decision
Effective from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, minimum rates in Modern Awards increase by 4.75%. The National Minimum Wage rises to $26.44 per hour (up approximately 6% for entry-level minimum wage workers).
25% casual loading calculations
Casual employees are entitled to a 25% casual loading on top of their base hourly rate in lieu of paid leave entitlements. Under the new National Minimum Wage, the minimum casual hourly rate rises to $33.05 per hour.
Modern award classifications and structural adjustments
Employees covered by industry Modern Awards (such as Retail, Hospitality, Fast Food, or Building awards) receive the 4.75% increase applied directly to their specific award classification pay scale. Your classification level matters as much as the percentage: a Retail Level 4 supervisor and a Level 1 assistant both get 4.75%, but from different bases, so the dollar raise differs even inside one store. The Fair Work Ombudsman's pay guides publish the exact new rate for every classification within days of 1 July, and checking your level against the guide is a two-minute task that catches both underpayment and accidental misclassification, the second being the more expensive error over a full year.
Junior rates, apprentices, and penalty multipliers all move together
The 4.75% decision cascades through every rate derived from the adult base. Junior percentages (a 17-year-old on 60% of the adult rate), apprentice and trainee scales, and casual loadings all recalculate from the new classification rate automatically, and so do penalty multipliers: a Sunday shift at 150% or a public holiday at 225% is now 150% or 225% of a larger number. For weekend-heavy workers the compounding is material, a hospitality casual doing mostly Sunday shifts sees the raise amplified through the loading AND the penalty multiplier stacked together. When you sanity-check your first post-July payslip, verify one ordinary shift and one penalty shift separately; payroll systems that hard-coded old penalty dollar amounts instead of multipliers are exactly the ones that miss the update.
What the numbers actually mean for you
Which rate is actually yours
Only about a fifth of Australian employees are paid exactly at award or minimum-wage rates; everyone else is on enterprise agreements or above-award contracts. The increase still matters to many of them: enterprise agreement rates can never fall below the award floor, so a 4.75% award jump can catch up to and overtake a stale EBA rate, forcing a top-up. If your agreement rate is now under the new award rate for your classification, your employer owes the difference from the first full pay period after 1 July.
The award-versus-NMW distinction also matters at the bottom: the National Minimum Wage ($26.44) only covers award-free employees, a small group. Almost everyone in hospitality, retail, care, and trades sits under a modern award whose classification rate is higher than the NMW, so check your award level on the Fair Work pay guides rather than assuming the headline number is your floor, and re-check it whenever your duties change, because classification follows the work you actually do.
What the raise is worth after tax, honestly
Jess's $3,537 gross raise does not survive contact with the tax system intact: at her income the extra dollars are taxed at 30% plus the 2% Medicare levy, leaving about $2,405 net. Helpfully, the SAME 1 July that raised her wage cut the 15% bracket rate, so her total take-home moves by more than the wage maths alone, the two policies were designed to land together.
Superannuation rides on top: the 12% super guarantee applies to the higher base, so her fund receives about $424 more each year without any action from her. For a 30-year-old, that single year's extra super compounds to roughly $3,200 by retirement age at typical returns, the least visible part of the raise is arguably the biggest.
For employers: the deadline is the first full pay period
The new rates bind from the first FULL pay period starting on or after 1 July 2026. A fortnightly cycle that began 25 June finishes at the old rates; the one starting 9 July must be at the new ones. Getting this boundary wrong in either direction creates underpayments or unbudgeted cost, and the wage-theft provisions in force since 2025 make systematic underpayment a criminal matter, not a back-pay inconvenience.
The mechanical checklist is short: reload award classifications in payroll software, re-derive every penalty and overtime rate from the new base (they are multiples of it, so they all move), re-test any annualised-salary or 'all-inclusive' arrangements against the new floor, and confirm STP reporting picks up the change from the correct period. An hour of payroll checking in the first July week is dramatically cheaper than a Fair Work Ombudsman audit finding the same error in November.
The annualised-salary check deserves its own sentence because it is the one professionals miss: a salaried retail manager on an 'all-inclusive' package is still protected by the award underneath, and the 4.75% increase raises the floor that package must beat across ordinary hours, overtime, and penalties combined. A salary that cleared the old floor comfortably can fail the new one for a manager working long weekend rosters, triggering the annual reconciliation clause most awards now require. If you pay or receive an annualised salary, the July change is the natural moment to re-run that reconciliation rather than waiting for the anniversary date.
How the wage increase math works
The Fair Work Commission's 2026 Annual Wage Review lifted modern award minimum rates by 4.75% and set the National Minimum Wage at $26.44 an hour ($1,004.90 for a 38-hour week) from 1 July 2026. The calculator applies the right rule for your employment type and shows the hourly, weekly, and annual difference.
Order of operations is the whole trick: the 4.75% applies to the BASE rate first, and the 25% casual loading multiplies the result. Casuals who apply the increase to their loaded rate get a slightly wrong number, and payroll teams that do it get an underpayment problem.
Calculation Steps:
- Award employees: new base = current base x 1.0475. Minimum-wage employees: new base = $26.44 regardless of the old rate.
- Casuals: multiply the NEW base by 1.25, the loading compounds on the increase, which is why casual gains are larger in dollar terms.
- Weekly earnings = effective hourly rate x weekly hours; the annual figure multiplies by 52.
- The deltas against your pre-July rate show the raise per hour, per week, and per year.
Worked example
Jess pours coffee under the Restaurant Award at a $30.00 base rate, casual, 38 hours a week, a common profile among the roughly 2.9 million workers the annual wage review directly reaches.
Her base rises 4.75% to $31.43; the 25% casual loading takes her effective rate to $39.29.
Weekly pay moves from $37.50 x 38 = $1,425.00 to $39.29 x 38 = $1,493.02.
That is $68 a week, roughly $3,537 a year, and note about $13.60 of the weekly gain exists only because the loading multiplied the increase, the compounding is real money.
Input definitions
Review the glossary of terms used in the calculation model below. Click on highlighted links to read more in-depth definitions in our financial glossary:
| Parameter | Definition & Context |
|---|---|
| Award Tier & Employment Status | Award vs national minimum wage, permanent vs casual. Each combination has its own arithmetic. |
| Current Base Hourly Rate | Your pre-July base BEFORE casual loading. Using the loaded rate double-counts the loading. |
| Weekly Hours | Ordinary hours; full-time is 38. Overtime and penalty hours are priced off the new base too, but separately. |
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