Fortnightly tax table

For payments made on or after 13 October 2020

Using this table

You should use this table if you make any of the following payments on a fortnightly basis:

• salary, wages, allowances and leave loading to employees
• paid parental leave
• directors’ fees
• salary and allowances to office holders (including members of parliament, statutory office holders, defence force members and police officers)
• payments to labour-hire workers
• payments to religious practitioners
• government education or training payments
• compensation, sickness or accident payments that are calculated at a periodical rate and made because a person is unable to work (unless the payment is made under an insurance policy to the policy owner).

Also use this table for payments made to foreign residents.

Other tax tables may apply if you made payments to shearers, workers in the horticultural industry, performing artists and those engaged on a daily or casual basis.

If you employ individuals under a working holiday makers visa, you must use the Tax table for working holiday makers for all payments made to them, including lump sum payments.

Working out the withholding amount

To work out the withholding amount:

1. Calculate your employee’s total fortnightly earnings – add any allowances and irregular payments that are to be included in this fortnight’s pay to the normal fortnightly earnings, ignoring any cents.

2. Input the amount from step 1 into the Withholding lookup tool, as per instructions in the tool.

3. Use the appropriate column to find the correct amount to withhold. If your employee is

• claiming the tax-free threshold, use column 2
• not claiming the tax-free threshold, use column 3.

4. If your employee has an entitlement to a tax offset, use the Ready reckoner for tax offsets to convert the employee’s estimate of their full-year entitlement into a fortnightly offset value. Then subtract this value from the withholding amount found in step 3.

5. If your employee is entitled to make an adjustment for the Medicare levy, subtract the value of the adjustment, determined from the Medicare levy adjustment fortnightly tax table from the amount found in step 4.

6. If your employee has advised you of an accumulated Higher Education Loan Program (HELP), VET Student Loan (VSL), Financial Supplement (FS), Student Start-up Loan (SSL) or Trade Support Loan (TSL) debt, add the amount determined from the Study and training support loans fortnightly tax table to the amount you calculated in step 5.

Do not allow for any tax offsets or Medicare levy adjustment if any of the following apply:

• you use column 3
• you use foreign resident tax rates
• when your employee has not provided you with their TFN.

When there are 27 pays in a financial year

In some years, you may have 27 pays instead of the usual 26. As this table is based on 26 pays, the extra pay may result in insufficient amounts being withheld. You should let your employees know when this occurs so if they are concerned about a shortfall in tax withheld, they can ask you to withhold the additional amount in the table below.

Extra withholding amount

Using a formula

The withholding amounts shown in this table can be expressed in a mathematical form.

If you have developed your own payroll software package, refer to Statement of formulas for calculating amounts to be withheld.