PAYE Calculator NZ, Work Out Your 2026-27 Take-Home Pay

New Zealand tax brackets for 2026-27

New Zealand taxes income in slices. Each slice of your income is taxed at that slice’s rate, so moving into a higher bracket never reduces your take-home pay, only the dollars above the threshold are taxed at the higher rate. These are the rates for the 2026-27 tax year, which runs from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027.

Income band	Tax rate
$0 to $15,600	10.5%
$15,601 to $53,500	17.5%
$53,501 to $78,100	30%
$78,101 to $180,000	33%
$180,001 and over	39%

These thresholds were lifted at the end of July 2024, the first bracket adjustment since 2010, and 1 April 2025 was the first full tax year on the new numbers. Nothing changed for 2026-27, the thresholds and rates carried over unchanged. On top of income tax, almost every earner also pays the ACC earners’ levy of 1.75 per cent, which is explained further down.

A worked example, on a $70,000 salary your income tax for 2026-27 is $13,220.50 for the year. The first $15,600 is taxed at 10.5 per cent, the next $37,900 at 17.5 per cent, and the final $16,500 at 30 per cent. Your marginal rate is 30 per cent, but your effective income tax rate is about 18.9 per cent, and that difference is the single most misunderstood thing in New Zealand tax conversation.

How PAYE works

PAYE stands for pay as you earn. Instead of handing you your full salary and asking for tax back at the end of the year, your employer deducts tax from every pay and sends it to Inland Revenue on your behalf. For most salary and wage earners that is the entire tax system, no return to file, nothing to square up.

Each payday your employer takes your gross pay for the period, works out the income tax on it using your tax code, adds the ACC earners’ levy, and passes both to IRD. If you have a student loan, repayments of 12 cents in every dollar you earn over $24,128 a year come out the same way, and KiwiSaver contributions are sent to your fund. What is left is your take-home pay.

Because PAYE taxes each pay period as a slice of a full year, it usually gets your annual tax almost exactly right. Where it drifts, a pay rise partway through the year, a bonus, or a few weeks without work, IRD’s automatic year-end assessment squares it up, refunding overpaid tax or billing shortfalls, generally between May and July each year.

Tax codes explained

Your tax code tells your employer which deduction rules to apply. It comes from the IR330 form you fill in when you start a job, and getting it right is the difference between a correct payslip and an unpleasant surprise.

• M is the standard code for your main job.
• ME is the main-job code for people entitled to the independent earner tax credit, which is worth up to $520 a year if you earn between $24,000 and $66,000, shrinking to nothing by $70,000. You cannot claim it if you or your partner receive Working for Families, an income-tested benefit, NZ Super or a Veteran’s Pension. The calculator above applies it automatically when your income qualifies.
• SL added to any code, such as M SL, tells your employer to deduct student loan repayments.
• SB, S, SH, ST and SA are the secondary codes for second jobs, covered in the next section.
• ND is the no-notification rate. If you do not give your employer a completed IR330, the law requires them to deduct 45 cents in the dollar plus the ACC levy. This is the usual culprit behind a shockingly small first payslip.

If you are on the wrong code, you are not stuck with the result. You can hand your employer a new IR330 at any time, and IRD’s year-end assessment automatically refunds most overdeductions. If your situation is unusual, you can ask IRD for a tailored tax code through myIR that matches your exact circumstances.

Secondary tax on a second job

Secondary tax has a terrible reputation it does not deserve. The myth is that second jobs are taxed at a punishing special rate. The reality is that a secondary code simply applies your correct marginal rate to your second income from the first dollar, because your first job’s code has already used up the lower brackets.

Total income from all jobs	Secondary code	Flat rate
$15,600 or less	SB	10.5%
$15,601 to $53,500	S	17.5%
$53,501 to $78,100	SH	30%
$78,101 to $180,000	ST	33%
$180,001 and over	SA	39%

Pick the code from your total income across all jobs and the flat rate lands on the bracket your extra earnings actually sit in. Someone on $60,000 whose second job pays $20,000 has a total of $80,000, so the second job takes ST at 33 per cent, exactly what those dollars would have faced inside a single $80,000 salary.

The one genuine wrinkle is when your second income straddles a bracket threshold. If your main job pays $50,000 and your second job $10,000, the first $3,500 of that second income really belongs in the 17.5 per cent bracket but ST-style flat codes cannot split it. In that case a tailored tax code from IRD deducts the precisely right amount each payday. Either way the year-end assessment trues everything up, secondary earners are not overtaxed across the year.

One more second-job trap, student loan deductions on secondary earnings take 12 cents of every dollar with no repayment threshold, because the $24,128 threshold is already applied against your main job.

The ACC levy and KiwiSaver on your payslip

Two more lines appear on most payslips alongside income tax, and both changed in 2026.

The ACC earners’ levy funds cover for injuries that happen outside work, and for 2026-27 it is $1.75 per $100 of earnings, up from $1.67 last year. It applies to your first $156,641 of income, so the most anyone pays is $2,741.22 for the year. Payroll systems bundle it into the PAYE figure, which is why your deductions look slightly larger than the tax brackets alone suggest, and why high earners see the levy stop partway through their income.

KiwiSaver employee contributions moved to a default of 3.5 per cent of gross pay on 1 April 2026, on the way to 4 per cent in 2028, and you can choose 3.5, 4, 6, 8 or 10 per cent, or apply for a temporary reduction to 3 per cent. Your contribution is calculated on your before-tax pay but it does not reduce the tax you pay, PAYE is worked out on your full gross first and KiwiSaver comes out afterwards. Your employer adds at least 3.5 per cent on top, though a contribution tax called ESCT is deducted from their share before it reaches your account. For fund choice, fees and what the 2026 changes mean for your balance at 65, see our full guide to growing your KiwiSaver faster, and for the debate about whether higher rates suit low earners, our report on the actuaries’ warning over 6 per cent contributions.

Common questions

How much tax do I pay on $70,000 in New Zealand

For the 2026-27 tax year, income tax on a $70,000 salary is $13,220.50, plus the ACC earners’ levy of $1,225.00, a combined $14,445.50 for the year. That is an effective rate of about 20.6 per cent of gross pay.

What is my take-home pay on $70,000

With no KiwiSaver or student loan, $70,000 leaves take-home pay of about $53,105 a year, or $1,068 a week. Add 3.5 per cent KiwiSaver and a student loan and it becomes roughly $47,600 a year. Use the calculator above to match your own settings.

How much tax do I pay on a second job

Your second job is taxed at a flat rate set by your total income across all jobs, 10.5 to 39 per cent under the SB, S, SH, ST or SA codes. On the right code this matches your marginal bracket, so you pay the same tax overall as if one employer paid you everything.

Why was my first payslip taxed so much

Usually one of two reasons. If you did not hand in an IR330 tax code form, your employer must use the no-notification rate of 45 per cent plus the ACC levy. Or you may be on a secondary code from an old job. Fix the code with your employer and IRD’s year-end assessment refunds any overpaid tax.

Is KiwiSaver taken out before or after tax

Your KiwiSaver percentage is calculated on your before-tax pay, but it does not lower your income tax. PAYE is worked out on your full gross pay first, then your KiwiSaver contribution is deducted from what remains, so the full headline percentage reaches your fund.

If you are planning what to do with the take-home number, our companion guides on growing your KiwiSaver and paying off your mortgage faster pick up where this page ends, and our resources on final pay and unpaid wages and student loans when you move overseas cover the edge cases. You can also see how wages themselves are tracking in our report on New Zealand’s real wage fall.