Enter your salary or wage and see what actually lands in your account, after tax, ACC, KiwiSaver and student loan.
This free PAYE calculator for NZ turns a salary or hourly wage into your genuine take-home pay per year, month, fortnight and week. Enter your gross, pick your KiwiSaver rate, flag a student loan, and it breaks out income tax, the ACC Earners' levy, KiwiSaver and student loan on current 2025/26 rates. It assumes the M tax code (your main job). Below the calculator is a plain guide to what each deduction is and why the first payslip surprises people.
Assumes the M tax code, one job, and the standard KiwiSaver and student loan rules. Excludes the Independent Earner Tax Credit and any Working for Families. A guide, not an exact payslip.
Rates current as at July 2026. Income tax brackets from 1 April 2025 and student loan rules checked against ird.govt.nz; ACC Earners' levy from the ACC Levy Guidebook 2026/27 (acc.co.nz). Guide only, not tax advice.
When you take a job, the number on the offer letter is your gross pay. It is not what you get. Four separate deductions sit between that figure and the money in your account, and PAYE is the name for the first two of them handled together.
Your employer works out the total, holds it back, pays it to Inland Revenue and ACC on your behalf, and sends you the rest. You never touch the deducted money. That is the whole point of PAYE, pay as you earn: the tax is collected as the wage is paid, so most people never file a return.
Charged on a sliding scale. Only the slice of your income inside each band is taxed at that band's rate, so a pay rise never leaves you worse off. The bands from 1 April 2025 are 10.5%, 17.5%, 30%, 33% and 39%.
A flat $1.52 per $100 you earn, funding cover for injuries that happen away from work. It is bundled into your PAYE, capped once you earn over $125,313 a year.
Your own contribution, 3% to 10% of gross, going into your retirement account. It is your money, but it still leaves your take-home. Your employer adds a compulsory contribution on top.
If you have one, 12% of every dollar you earn over $24,128 a year is taken to repay it. Interest-free while you live in New Zealand, so every dollar clears the balance.
People do the mental maths on the gross. A $70,000 salary feels like about $5,830 a month. Then the first payslip lands at roughly $4,470, and it feels like a mistake.
It is not. On $70,000 with 3% KiwiSaver and no student loan, income tax takes about $13,220, the ACC levy about $1,064, and KiwiSaver about $2,100. That is roughly $16,400 gone before you see a cent. Add a student loan and another $5,500 disappears. The calculator above shows you the exact split for your own number so there is no shock on payday.
The fix is simple: always budget off the take-home figure, never the gross. If your income is meant to fund the business you run rather than a wage, the same discipline applies to what your website brings in. We wrote a plain read on why a site gets traffic but no enquiries if the phone has gone quiet.
If you run a trade and you are about to put someone on, the wage is only part of the bill. On top of the gross you pay, you owe a compulsory employer KiwiSaver contribution of at least 3% of their gross pay, and that is a real cost to the business, not something you claw back from the worker.
So a worker on $70,000 costs you at least $72,100 in pay and KiwiSaver alone, before you count ACC Work levies on your own cover, holiday pay accruing at 8%, sick leave, tools, a vehicle, and the hours you spend managing them. A rough rule for a first hire is to budget 15% to 25% above the headline wage for the true cost of employing. Price your jobs on that number, not the bare wage, or the first employee quietly eats your margin.
Rates current as at July 2026. Income tax brackets from 1 April 2025 and student loan rules checked against ird.govt.nz; ACC Earners' levy from the ACC Levy Guidebook 2026/27 (acc.co.nz). This is a guide, not tax advice. For your own situation, talk to your accountant or Inland Revenue.
PAYE is your income tax plus the ACC Earners' levy, worked out on your gross pay and deducted by your employer before you are paid. Income tax runs on a sliding scale: the first slice of your income is taxed at 10.5%, then 17.5%, 30%, 33% and 39% as you earn more. The ACC Earners' levy is a flat $1.52 per $100 you earn. KiwiSaver and any student loan come off on top of PAYE.
M is the main tax code for your primary or highest-paying job when you do not have a student loan on that income. This calculator assumes the M code. If you have a student loan the code becomes M SL, and secondary jobs use different codes like SB, S, SH, ST or SA. Using the wrong tax code is one of the most common reasons people over or underpay through the year.
You choose your rate: 3%, 4%, 6%, 8% or 10% of your gross pay, with 3% the default. It comes out of your pay on top of PAYE. Your employer also pays a compulsory contribution on top of your wage, currently at least 3% of your gross, which is a cost to them, not a deduction from you.
Most people quote their salary as the gross figure, before anything comes out. Your take-home is that number minus income tax, minus the ACC Earners' levy, minus KiwiSaver, minus any student loan repayment. On a $70,000 salary with 3% KiwiSaver, that stack removes roughly $16,000 a year, so the pay that hits your account is noticeably less than a twelfth of your salary.
Blunt feedback welcome. It goes straight to the humans who built it.
Payroll goes out every week. Make sure the site bringing work in keeps pace. Get a free teardown, or tell us what you need.