Methodology and Sources

calx.io is a set of Australian financial calculators built on one principle: trust through accuracy. Every rate comes from published Australian Taxation Office (ATO) or state revenue office material, every calculation runs in your browser, and every calculator links to its sources. There are no ads, no accounts and no tracking of your figures.

You will see calx.io on the calculators and calx.com.au in the address bar. Both take you to the same Australian site, which is independent and not affiliated with any government agency, bank or super fund.

• ATO: income tax brackets, Low Income Tax Offset, Seniors and Pensioners Tax Offset, Medicare levy and Medicare Levy Surcharge thresholds, HECS/HELP repayment thresholds, superannuation guarantee rate and concessional caps. See the full tables on the tax rates page.
• State and territory revenue offices: transfer (stamp) duty rates, first home buyer concessions and foreign purchaser surcharges, plus land tax scales, thresholds and absentee owner surcharges for all 8 jurisdictions. Each result on the stamp duty and land tax calculators links to the official source.
• APRA guidance: the 3 percentage point serviceability buffer lenders are required to apply when assessing home loans (APRA is the banking regulator).
• Household Expenditure Measure (HEM): the industry benchmark for minimum living expenses, scaled by household type, dependants and income, as lenders do.
• ASFA Retirement Standard: the benchmark annual budgets for a comfortable retirement used by the super calculator (ASFA is the super industry association).

Rates and thresholds were last refreshed in July 2026. Where the ATO has not yet published next year's indexed thresholds, the prior year's values are carried forward and flagged on the tax rates page.

The pay calculator and tax tracker share the same tax data and core tax calculations (brackets, LITO, HECS/HELP bands and Medicare Levy Surcharge tiers) but run separate calculation flows suited to their inputs. Both work on annual figures: gross pay is converted to an annual amount, pre-tax deductions (salary sacrifice, novated lease, work deductions) reduce taxable income, then income tax is applied bracket by bracket for your category (resident, non-resident, working holiday maker, or resident without the tax-free threshold for a second job).

Offsets (LITO, SAPTO, franking credits) reduce the tax payable. The 2% Medicare levy applies to residents, with the low-income phase-in, and the Medicare Levy Surcharge applies above the threshold when you do not hold private hospital cover. HECS/HELP repayments use the marginal system from FY2025-26 (a percentage of income above each threshold) and the flat-rate tables for earlier years, calculated on repayment income: taxable income plus reportable fringe benefits and salary-sacrificed super.

Every pay calculator result includes an expandable "How this is calculated" breakdown so you can audit each step.

The pay calculator can run the question the other way round: tell it the take-home pay you want and it works out the salary that produces it. This is the same calculation described above, searched rather than read forward. Nothing about the tax rules changes, and no second set of tax logic exists.

Every other input is held exactly as you have set it: financial year, whether super is included in your salary, student debt, Medicare and private hospital cover, salary sacrifice, deductions, novated lease and family settings. Only the salary is varied. The salary the search settles on is then run through the normal calculator one more time, and every figure shown comes from that run, so the answer is never the amount you typed reflected back at you. The result always shows what you asked for, what the salary actually takes home, and the difference between them.

Salaries are solved to the nearest dollar, or the nearest cent for a day or hourly rate, so the take-home usually lands within about a dollar a year of the target rather than exactly on it. When it does not land exactly the result is labelled a closest estimate.

Take-home pay does not always rise smoothly with salary. In the years where HECS/HELP is charged as a flat percentage of your whole repayment income (2024-25 and earlier), and in 2021-22 where the low and middle income tax offset ended at a fixed income, crossing the threshold costs a lump of tax at once. That means two different salaries can produce the same take-home pay. Where that happens both are shown, with the rule that causes it named, and neither is presented as the better answer.

The Medicare levy surcharge steps in the same way, but it is assessed through your tax return rather than withheld from each pay, so the pay calculator reports it separately and does not subtract it from take-home pay. It therefore does not affect the salary solved for here.

The result is an estimate of the salary that produces a take-home figure under these rules. It is not a payroll determination, and an employer's own withholding, pay cycle rounding and package structure can differ.

The tax return tracker estimates a full-year position rather than a pay packet, for the 2022-23 year onwards. It adds the income types an individual return reports (salary and wages, interest, dividends, rental, capital gains, business, trust and foreign income) and subtracts the deductions you itemise, then applies the same brackets, offsets, Medicare levy and HECS/HELP rules as the pay calculator. Franked dividends are grossed up by their franking credits into assessable income before the credits are applied as a refundable offset. Capital gains are entered as the net capital gain, the amount that belongs in taxable income after the main residence exemption, capital losses and the CGT discount; the tracker adds that figure as it stands and applies no discount of its own. The capital gains calculator below works the net gain out for one sale and can hand it across.

From 2026-27 the tracker applies the standard deduction for work-related expenses in section 25-130 of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, inserted by the Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026. For an Australian resident with assessable labour income it is the lesser of $1,000 and that income, reduced dollar for dollar (not below zero) by the work expenses claimed that it covers: expenses of earning salary and wages (including legal costs of earning them), car expenses, travel between workplaces, repairs and decline in value of work assets, and COVID-19 tests. Covered expenses beyond that cap still count in full as deductions. Union fees and professional memberships, income protection, sickness and accident premiums, low value pool depreciation, donations, tax agent fees and rental or investment expenses do not reduce it. It is a deduction, not an offset, so it lowers taxable income and everything worked out from taxable income, including the Medicare levy and HECS/HELP repayment income, and it appears as its own line beside the deductions you entered. The tracker counts salary and wages (which includes Parental Leave Pay) and allowances as labour income, and government payments other than Parental Leave Pay do not count; termination payments and super income streams also count in law but have no field here. It is not applied to the working holiday maker status, which does not record tax residency, and the pay calculator does not apply it because it does not change what is withheld from pay.

It is an estimate to help you prepare, not a lodgement. It does not connect to myGov, does not pre-fill from the ATO, and does not lodge anything. Figures follow ATO individual tax return guidance for the year you select.

The HECS/HELP calculator projects year by year when a debt is cleared, following the ATO's real crediting order rather than a simple balance reduction: voluntary repayments made before 1 June come off first, then indexation is applied to the remaining balance on 1 June, then the year's compulsory repayment is credited when your return is assessed. Amounts withheld from your pay during the year do not reduce the balance until then, which is why a debt can grow in a year you were paying it down.

Compulsory repayments use the same ATO repayment bands as the pay calculator, capped at the remaining debt. Indexation defaults to 2.8%, the rate applied on 1 June 2026, which is set as the lower of CPI and the Wage Price Index; you can change it, and repayment thresholds are indexed forward with the salary growth assumption because they track average weekly earnings. The one-off 20% debt reduction of June 2025 is not applied, because it is already reflected in the balance the ATO shows you.

The shift and penalty rates calculator turns an hourly rate and a weekly roster into an annual gross: each shift type (ordinary, evening, night, Saturday, Sunday, public holiday) is paid at the base rate plus its penalty loading, with casual loading added on top for casuals, the additive approach most modern awards use. A loading is the percentage paid on top of the base rate, so a 25% loading is entered as 25. Evening and night are separate lines with their own hours and loadings. The annualised gross then runs through the same tax engine as the pay calculator. Penalty loadings vary by award and agreement and are entered by you: the starting figures are common assumptions, not any award, and the calculator does not decide what you are entitled to. It links to the Fair Work pay calculator for authoritative award rates rather than modelling the awards themselves, so check your applicable award or agreement before relying on a figure.

The pay rise calculator and the job and pay comparison calculator add no tax rules of their own. Each runs the full pay engine once per scenario and reports the difference, so a comparison is always two complete take-home calculations rather than an estimate applied to a gap. That is why a rise can cross a tax bracket without the result ever showing a fall in take-home pay.

Both assume a resident who claims the tax-free threshold and holds private hospital cover unless you change those settings, and the pay rise calculator uses the current financial year. Employer super, Medicare and HECS/HELP are recalculated in each scenario rather than held constant.

The novated lease calculator runs the pay engine twice, with and without the lease, instead of multiplying the lease cost by a marginal rate. That matters when the packaged amount crosses a tax bracket, where the shortcut overstates the saving.

When you enter the car's value, fringe benefits tax is modelled the way providers structure packages. Petrol and diesel cars use the employee contribution method: the statutory 20% of the car's base value is paid from after-tax salary to cancel the FBT liability, and only the remainder is packaged before tax. Eligible electric cars are exempt from FBT and stay fully pre-tax, but the reportable fringe benefits amount (the taxable value grossed up by 1.8868 once it exceeds $2,000) is still counted as income for HECS/HELP repayments and the Medicare Levy Surcharge. Without a car value, a petrol or diesel result is labelled as a before-FBT estimate. Rates follow the ATO's FBT guidance and the electric car exemption.

The comparison with a car loan and paying cash asks a different question: what it costs to own the same car at the end of the same term. The lease total is the reduction in take-home pay over the term (the same two engine runs, multiplied by the number of years at this year's rates) plus the residual. The residual is the figure on your quote or, when none is entered, the ATO minimum for the term from TD 93/142 and ATO ID 2002/1004 (the eight year effective life column: 65.63%, 56.25%, 46.88%, 37.5% and 28.13% of the amount financed for one to five years), with 10% GST added at payout unless you say your quote already includes it. A quoted residual below the minimum is flagged, not corrected. The car loan column runs the car loan calculator over the same term with the establishment fee added to the loan and no balloon unless you enter one for the loan, which stays owing at the end and counts in its total (it is never taken from the lease residual); the cash column is the drive-away price. Both add the running costs, paid from take-home pay. No separate GST saving is added to the lease, because the GST credit on the car is already inside the quoted lease payments. A petrol or diesel lease cannot be compared until the car value is entered, since without it the lease figure ignores fringe benefits tax. Not modelled: the operating cost FBT method, interest or returns lost on cash spent upfront, super paid on a packaged salary, pay rises, early termination and fees not in the quote. Tax saved is one line of the lease column, never the answer, and no option is recommended.

The redundancy calculator applies the National Employment Standards weeks scale at your base rate, then the ATO's genuine redundancy rules: the indexed tax-free amount (a base plus an amount per completed year of service), ETP tax on the excess at the concessional rates up to the ETP cap, and flat 32% withholding on unused annual and long service leave. It models a genuine redundancy only: using your date of birth and termination date it checks the ATO condition that you are under Age Pension age on the day of dismissal, and blocks the result with an explanation when you are not, because non-genuine payments depend on your other income (the whole-of-income cap). The 17% concessional ETP rate applies when you reach preservation age by 30 June of the payment year. Figures are verified against ATO withholding schedules 7 and 11 and Fair Work guidance.

Notice is a separate entitlement from redundancy pay, and the calculator keeps the two apart. Under the National Employment Standards the minimum employer notice is 1 week for not more than 1 year of continuous service, 2 weeks for more than 1 and up to 3 years, 3 weeks for more than 3 and up to 5, and 4 weeks beyond that, with one extra week where you are over 45 years old and have completed at least 2 years of service when notice is given. Exactly 45 is not over 45, and that extra week increases notice only: it never changes the redundancy pay weeks. Because the service bands use "more than" boundaries while the calculator holds completed whole years, a result at 1, 3 or 5 years is labelled as estimated, and you can enter your own total notice entitlement from an award, agreement or contract instead. Age is tested on the day notice was given, so where that may differ from your termination date the calculator says so and lets you enter the notice date. Source: Fair Work Act 2009 s 117 and Fair Work Ombudsman, "Notice of termination and redundancy pay".

Payment in lieu of notice is shown as a gross figure and is deliberately excluded from the estimated tax and net payout. Whether it is taxed as part of a genuine redundancy payment depends on whether the amount exceeds what you would have been paid on a voluntary termination, which turns on your own employment terms. Rather than guess, the calculator reports the gross amount and says the treatment depends on your circumstances.

Years of continuous service is your figure, not an assumed one: it drives both the weeks payable and the tax-free limit, so the calculator shows no result until you enter it. When you have not given both a date of birth and a termination date, the Age Pension condition cannot be checked, so the tax-free amount is shown as assumed rather than confirmed until you confirm it.

Long service leave is state law, not federal, so the calculator holds a separate rule set for each state and territory, taken from that jurisdiction's own authority and linked on every result. The rules that differ most are the accrual rate (most states accrue about 0.867 weeks per year of service, South Australia and the Northern Territory 1.3), when the full entitlement arrives (10 years in most states, 7 in Victoria and the ACT), and when a pro-rata entitlement can be paid out on leaving (from 5 years in NSW and the ACT, 7 elsewhere).

Leave accrues from your first day everywhere; the thresholds control access to it, not whether it builds up. Some states pay pro-rata leave on resignation for any reason, others only for specific reasons such as illness or redundancy, and the calculator states which applies rather than assuming. Portable schemes for construction, cleaning and community services (QLeave, CoINVEST and equivalents) follow separate rules and are not modelled. Where your ordinary pay is not simply salary divided by 52, you can enter a weekly figure directly.

The borrowing power calculator works the way lenders assess serviceability, not on rules of thumb. Salaries are converted to after-tax (net) income using the same ATO tax engine. Bonus, overtime, rental and other income are taxed at the marginal rate and then counted at 80%, as lenders do. HECS/HELP repayments are estimated from each applicant's income at ATO rates, not as a flat percentage of the balance.

Living expenses use the higher of your declared figure and a HEM benchmark scaled by household type, dependants and income. The Household Expenditure Measure lenders licence is not published, so the benchmark calx applies is its own approximation of it; a lender uses its own living-expense assessment and may hold different HEM data or override it, which is one reason the result is indicative rather than a lender quote. Credit cards are assessed at 3.8% of the limit per month. The loan is then sized with a principal-and-interest annuity formula at your rate plus the 3 percentage point APRA buffer. Deposit, loan-to-value ratio (LVR) and a maximum purchase price are derived from your savings, capped at 95% LVR. Above 80% LVR the result says lenders mortgage insurance (LMI) is likely but does not estimate the premium: no insurer publishes a premium table, and the banded estimate calx used until 29 September 2026 was well below every published sample, so the premium is left to your lender.

The monthly repayment is the standard amortisation formula at your rate divided by 12, over the number of months in the term, rounded to the nearest cent. Weekly and fortnightly amounts are converted from that monthly figure rather than calculated as a separate annuity, because that is what Australian lenders document, and you choose which conversion your lender uses: dividing the yearly total by 26 or 52 keeps your yearly amount the same as paying monthly, while halving or quartering the monthly repayment works out to about 13 monthly repayments a year. Calx rounds to the nearest cent and does not model lender-specific rounding.

Interest accrues daily at your annual rate divided by 365, including in leap years, on your loan balance less any offset balance at the end of that day. Each month of daily interest is rounded to the cent and added to the loan on the last day of the calendar month, and the interest added that day starts earning interest from the following day. Because accrual runs on the end-of-day balance, a repayment reduces the interest for the day it is made, which is the whole reason paying more often saves anything. Lenders vary on the exact charge day (the last calendar day, the last business day, or a day set in your loan offer) and on that own-day boundary. Over a 30-year loan the difference between those conventions is a few dollars.

The loan is simulated one calendar day at a time from the settlement date, so real month lengths and leap days are counted rather than approximated. The final repayment is a smaller closing payment that clears the balance plus the interest accrued since the last monthly charge, and that residual interest is counted in the total interest figure. During an interest-only period each repayment is the interest accrued since the previous repayment date, so the balance does not drift with the days in a month or a leap year; the quoted interest-only figure is one period of interest at the nominal rate (the rate divided by 12, then converted like-for-like to your frequency), which is why it says about. Choosing how a fortnightly or weekly amount is worked out changes the principal-and-interest repayment after the period, not the interest-only figure. When the period ends the principal-and-interest repayment is worked out once, on the principal still owing at that point (the amount borrowed less any extra repayments made during the period) over the remaining contractual term, which is how lenders recalculate it. It is not re-worked after later extra repayments: those shorten the loan rather than lowering the repayment. An interest-only period always leaves at least a year of principal and interest. A loan already running is modelled forward from the date its balance is as at (today unless a date is set): the balance entered is the opening principal, the remaining years and months are the term in whole months, and the repayment entered is the scheduled repayment exactly as typed, with the minimum for that term shown beside it. Interest accrued since the last statement is not included. A repayment that does not cover the interest is reported as never repaid, with no payoff date or saving. The simulation runs for the term plus fifteen years; a repayment that covers the interest but has not cleared the loan by then is reported as not reached within that horizon, and no payoff date, total interest or saving is invented for it. A one-off lump sum is taken off the balance on its date, before that day's repayment, and never beyond what is owed. The year by year table counts loan years from the settlement date; the month by month view counts calendar months, the way a statement does, and both are folds of the same simulation so they always agree with each other and with the totals. Savings are measured against a baseline of the same loan, term, rate, repayment and settings with no extra repayments, no lump sum and no offset, run through the same simulation; nothing else differs, and no saving is claimed when either run never repays. Fees, rate changes, weekend and public holiday payment shifts, and redraw restrictions are not modelled.

The Home Loan Refinance and Break-even Calculator compares two loans rather than costing one. Your current loan and the proposed one are both run forward from the comparison date through the same daily simulation described above, so the interest basis, the month-end charge, the offset effect and the closing payment are identical on both sides and nothing about the comparison depends on a second engine.

On every calendar day each loan is measured the same way: the total you have paid it, plus what you still owe on it including interest accrued since the last charge, plus any money paid outside the loan, less any cashback received. That is the loan's economic position, and the difference between the two positions is how much better or worse off the refinance leaves you on that day. Money that pays down principal moves from your cash into your equity rather than being spent, which is why what you have paid and what you still owe are added together: two loans that differ only in how fast the principal comes down compare as equal, and a longer term with a lower minimum repayment can never look like a saving when it is only paying more slowly. Break-even is the first day the difference reaches zero and never falls below zero again before both loans are finished, so a cashback or a fee anniversary cannot produce a crossover that is later undone. When the two loans cost the same on every day the result says so rather than claiming an immediate break-even, and when a lower rate never recovers its costs the result is an explicit no break-even rather than a date.

Switching costs are the total you enter, never estimated: discharge, application, valuation, settlement, mortgage registration, lenders mortgage insurance and any break cost your lender has quoted. The part you add to the new loan raises the balance that loan opens at and accrues interest from the first day, and is counted once as borrowing rather than a second time as a cash cost; the rest is cash paid on the comparison date. A cashback is credited on the date you say you expect it, because lenders pay at different times. Annual package fees on either loan are charged one year after the comparison date and on each anniversary while that loan is still open, symmetrically, so the fee you already pay today is not pretended to fall due again now; they are not pro-rated, and a fee falling on the day a loan is paid off is not charged. An offset balance is your own money and is held at the same amount throughout, so choosing whether it follows you to the new loan changes only which loan's daily interest it reduces, never how much you own.

Both rates are the nominal interest rates you enter and are held constant for the whole comparison. This is not a rate forecast, and it is not a comparison rate: a comparison rate already folds in fees that this calculator counts separately, so entering one would charge them twice. The proposed loan keeps whatever is left of your current term unless you set a different one, and a longer proposed term is flagged wherever it appears, with both payoff dates shown. Alongside the proposed minimum repayment, a second result keeps your current repayment budget, converted to the proposed cycle so the yearly amount is the same; when that converted amount is below the proposed minimum the strategy is reported as unavailable with the shortfall, rather than quietly substituting the minimum. Weekly and fortnightly minimums use the same-yearly-amount conversion from the monthly figure. Results are nominal dollars, with no inflation, present value, tax deductibility, opportunity cost or change in what the property is worth. Fixed and introductory rate periods, interest-only, split and construction loans, cash-out and debt consolidation, redraw, lenders mortgage insurance estimation, eligibility and lender approval are all outside the model. Moneysmart's guidance on switching home loans is the plain-English companion to this: the benefits have to outweigh the costs, and a longer new term can cost more even at a lower rate.

The Car Loan Repayments calculator models one product: a fixed rate, reducing balance consumer car loan with level repayments and an optional balloon payment. The amount financed is the vehicle price less your deposit and trade-in, plus the establishment fee when you add that to the loan. The monthly repayment is the level amount whose present value, plus the present value of the balloon, equals the amount financed, rounded to the cent. At a rate of zero it is simply the amount financed less the balloon, spread over the term.

A balloon payment is residual principal: the part of the loan you have not repaid when the term ends, due as one lump sum after your last regular repayment. Because it is discounted at the loan rate, it stays part of the balance the whole term and is charged interest the whole term, which is why a balloon lowers each repayment and raises the total interest. The percentage is a percentage of the amount borrowed for the car, not of the vehicle price and not of the amount financed, so it does not move when you switch the establishment fee between financed and upfront. The only limit calx enforces is the mathematical one, that the balloon is less than the amount financed. Lender caps vary (ANZ publishes 50% at three years falling to 30% at five, Pepper Money publishes none at six years or more) so they are shown as guidance and never applied as a rule.

Monthly is the contractual repayment and every other figure comes from it: the fortnightly and weekly amounts are that monthly repayment times 12 divided by 26 or 52, so your yearly total is the same. Some lenders instead halve or quarter the monthly repayment, which is about 13 monthly repayments a year, and some car lenders debit monthly only and have no weekly or fortnightly amount at all. Interest, the schedule and every total are worked out on the monthly basis whichever frequency you display.

Interest for each month is the balance times your annual rate divided by 12, rounded to the cent. That is the model every lender quoting tool and published worked example uses to produce a repayment. Actual lenders commonly work interest out daily on the balance and charge it monthly, so a statement can differ from these figures by a few dollars over the term. The final regular repayment absorbs the cents left over from rounding, so the balloon is due exactly as entered, and the schedule shows the balloon as its own maturity event rather than folding it into the last year.

Fees have three treatments and none is counted twice. A financed establishment fee is principal and earns interest. An upfront establishment fee is a cash cost, in the totals but not in the loan. A monthly account fee is kept out of the headline repayment, because it is billed monthly and has no per fortnight or per week amount, but it is inside total fees, total paid to lender and the total cost of the car. Total interest, total fees, total paid to lender and total cost of the car all reconcile to the cent.

Not modelled: negative equity on a trade-in, extra repayments and early payout (fixed rate car loans commonly carry break costs), a comparison rate, novated leases and their tax treatment, dealer Guaranteed Future Value products and their guarantee, flat rate or add-on finance, motor vehicle stamp duty, registration, insurance, depreciation, servicing, fuel or charging, and business use deductions.

The Personal Loan Repayments calculator models one product: a fixed rate, reducing balance personal loan, secured or unsecured, with level principal and interest repayments over 1 to 15 years. The loan amount and the interest rate both come from you. calx publishes no lender rates and never fills in a rate, so there is no result until both are entered. Secured and unsecured loans use the same arithmetic; only the rate you enter differs.

Interest is charged at the same frequency as the repayments, the assumption ASIC Moneysmart states for its own personal loan calculator. A weekly loan is charged the balance times the yearly rate divided by 52 each week, a fortnightly loan divided by 26, and a monthly loan divided by 12. The level repayment is the standard annuity at that periodic rate over the term in repayments, rounded to the cent, so each frequency is its own schedule rather than a conversion of the monthly figure. That is the difference from the car loan calculator, where monthly is the contract because many car lenders debit monthly only. Paying more often at the same nominal rate costs slightly less interest, because each repayment reduces the balance sooner. Each period's interest is rounded half up to the cent as an exact decimal (the same helper the car loan uses), and the final repayment is exactly the balance plus that period's interest, so the loan finishes at zero and never below it.

An establishment fee is either added to the loan, where it is borrowed, raises the repayment and is charged interest, or paid upfront, where it is cash at the start and the repayments are unchanged. It is counted once in total fees either way. A monthly account fee is billed for each month the loan is open (a part month counts as a month) whatever the repayment frequency, and is kept out of the repayment figure so the repayment matches the lender's quote. Total cost is the loan amount plus the interest plus every fee, and cost of borrowing is the interest plus the fees; both reconcile to the cent.

An extra repayment is a fixed amount added to every scheduled repayment. It is compared with the same loan run again with no extra repayment, through the same ledger, which gives the interest saved, the repayments and months saved, and any account fees avoided by closing sooner. The last repayment is only what is left owing, so an extra repayment can never overpay the loan.

Not modelled: a comparison rate (calx shows interest and fees as dollar amounts instead of folding them into one percentage), daily interest calculation (lenders commonly work interest out daily, which can move the figures by a few dollars), early repayment or break fees, variable rate changes, interest-only periods, balloon payments, redraw, credit cards and lines of credit, and payday or other small amount credit contracts, which have their own fee rules.

The Credit Card Payoff calculator answers one question: how long an existing credit card balance takes to clear, and what the interest costs, if you pay only the minimum repayment, and what a fixed higher repayment changes. It assumes you make no new purchases and take no cash advances, and that the whole balance is charged the purchase rate you enter, which stays the same. These are the same assumptions ASIC Moneysmart states for its credit card calculator. The balance, the purchase rate, the minimum repayment percentage and its dollar amount all come from you; calx publishes no issuer rates or minimum repayment rules, so there is no result until all four are entered.

A credit card is revolving credit, not a loan with a term, so this is not the personal loan arithmetic. The calculator works one month at a time, in this order. Interest is charged on the balance at the yearly rate divided by 12, rounded half up to the cent as an exact decimal (the same helper the car and personal loan calculators use). That gives the statement closing balance. The minimum repayment is the greater of your percentage of that closing balance (rounded the same way) and the dollar amount, but never more than the closing balance, which is how Moneysmart describes a minimum. Because it is worked out again every month, the minimum falls as the balance falls. The repayment is then made, and what is left is carried into the next month. The last payment is only what is left owing, so the balance finishes at exactly zero. A $5,000 balance at 20% with a minimum of 2% or $25 takes 486 months (40 years 6 months) to clear and costs $18,499.40 in interest.

A fixed higher repayment is the same amount every month until the card is clear, with the last payment capped at what is owing. It must be at least the minimum due each month; if it is less in any month, the calculator says so rather than topping it up. Paying $250 a month on the balance above clears it in 25 months with $1,133.05 in interest. The time and interest saved are the minimum-only figures less the fixed ones, from the same monthly ledger.

Some repayments never clear a card. If a month's repayment is no more than that month's interest, the balance is not falling, and because interest and the minimum both rise with the balance it never will; the calculator says so instead of showing a payoff time. It also stops at 100 years.

Fees are optional and differ from Moneysmart, which leaves them out. Annual fee is assumed to be charged every 12 months, starting after the first 12 months. That is months 13, 25, 37 and so on, while a balance remains: the current year's fee is taken to be in the balance already. Issuers set their own fee dates, so this is a convention, not a claim about any particular card, and there is no fee date to choose. The fee is added to the balance at the start of its month, before that month's interest, so it is charged interest like a purchase and counts towards the minimum repayment. It is paid through the repayments and counted once, in the fees total; total paid is always the balance plus the interest plus those fees. Because the fee keeps being added, a minimum repayment that falls with the balance can end up only just covering the interest and the fee: with a $99 annual fee the $5,000 example above is not cleared within 100 years at the minimum, while $250 a month still clears it in 26 months.

Not modelled: new spending, cash advances and their higher rate, interest-free days, promotional and balance transfer rates, daily interest (issuers charge interest daily, and when in the month you pay matters, so statements will differ a little), late payment and other fees, and any issuer's own minimum repayment rules beyond a percentage and a dollar amount.

Transfer duty uses each state and territory's published rate tables, including owner-occupier rates (VIC, QLD, WA), first home buyer exemptions and concessions, foreign purchaser surcharges, and the NT's quadratic formula. Victoria's pensioner concession is calculated; for other states the calculator shows a reminder to check the revenue office because eligibility rules vary too much to model reliably. First home concessions follow each revenue office's published method: in NSW the saving between $800,000 and $1,000,000 (and on vacant land between $350,000 and $450,000) is the duty at the exemption threshold scaled by how far the price sits below the cap, as the Revenue NSW calculator applies it; in Queensland the first home concession is a stepped amount by $10,000 band taken off the home concession duty; in Victoria it is a sliding percentage of the duty. One simplification remains: the rate tables that charge per $100 "or part thereof" are applied to the exact price, so a price that is not a whole hundred can sit a few dollars under the official figure.

Land tax uses each state and territory's published progressive rate scale, applied to the total taxable land (site) value you enter, the same aggregated basis the state revenue offices assess on. Separate company and trust scales are applied where they exist (VIC trust surcharge rates, QLD companies and trustees, SA trusts, NSW special trusts), along with foreign and absentee owner surcharges and WA's metropolitan region improvement tax. The ACT is the exception: it assesses each property separately, as a fixed charge plus marginal rates on that property's average unimproved value (AUV, the average of up to the last 5 years of unimproved values), so enter one property's AUV and calculate each ACT rental separately. The Northern Territory levies no land tax. Exemptions (your own home, primary production) are excluded by entering only taxable land value.

The Selling Costs and Net Proceeds calculator estimates the cash a seller would have at settlement: the sale price, less the costs of selling, less the loan payout. Every figure comes from you. There is no standard or official real estate commission in Australia, so calx supplies no commission rate and no fee, and it never estimates the loan payout from a projected balance: the payout is the figure your lender gives you for the settlement date.

The agent's commission can be entered as a percentage of the sale price or as a dollar amount, and you say whether it includes GST. A percentage is applied to the sale price exactly and rounded half up to the cent. A commission entered plus GST has 10% added to the fee, each rounded to the cent the way an agent's tax invoice shows it; one entered including GST is used as it stands, and the GST inside it (one eleventh) is shown for information. The commission is counted once, including its GST, and the same commission entered as a percentage or as the equivalent dollar amount gives the same result. Marketing, conveyancing and legal, mortgage discharge and bank fees, and other selling costs are added as entered, as the amounts you will pay. Total selling costs are the sum of those items; net before loan payout is the sale price less that total; the estimated net cash at settlement is net before loan payout less the payout. A payout larger than what is left is shown as a shortfall.

Cash at settlement is not the capital gain, and capital gains tax is never subtracted from it: any tax is worked out on the gain and paid through a tax return, which the Capital Gains Tax calculator estimates separately. Stamp duty is paid by the buyer and is not a seller's cost. Not included: settlement adjustments for council rates, water and strata levies, a deposit released before settlement, fixed rate break costs other than one your lender has quoted and you enter, renovations and capital improvements, and any fee not on your own quotes.

The Cash to Complete calculator estimates the total cash a purchaser needs from their own money for one property purchase: the deposit plus the costs of buying that are paid in cash. That is the whole of the buyer's cash for the purchase, not only the balance paid on settlement day; a conveyancer's settlement statement may show the same money as a deposit paid when the contract is signed and a balance paid at settlement. The deposit is what you enter. The loan towards the price is the purchase price less the deposit, so a deposit equal to the price is a cash purchase with no loan, and a deposit larger than the price is refused rather than turned into a surplus.

Stamp duty comes from the calx stamp duty calculator for the state or territory, buyer type, property type and first home answer you choose, with any first home concession applied on the stated conditions. Until you confirm those conditions the duty line and the headline are both shown as assumed. The duty uses the rates calx holds now: it is not dated, so a share link opened after a duty change shows the current duty. Foreign purchaser surcharges and the Victorian pensioner concession are not included. The transfer registration fee and, when there is a loan, the mortgage registration fee are the land registry fees in force on your settlement date, from each registry's 2026-27 schedule. They rise each 1 July; in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia the transfer fee rises with the price, and in South Australia it is ad valorem (over $5,000 on a $500,000 purchase). Victoria's fee is the electronic lodgement fee, rounded up to the next whole dollar as the registry does. A settlement date after the last published year uses that year's fees and is flagged. Conveyancing and legal ($1,500) and a building and pest inspection ($600) are calx starting assumptions you can change; lender fees and other costs are $0 until you enter them. The $1,500 sits within the range published guides give for one side of a purchase (about $800 to $2,500 including disbursements); it is not built up from a particular solicitor's fee or platform fee. calx does not estimate electronic settlement (PEXA) fees separately, because they depend on each party's role in the settlement and change during the year: depending on the provider they may be part of a conveyancing quote or charged as a disbursement. Replace the assumption with your conveyancer's quote where you have one.

Lenders mortgage insurance is not estimated anywhere in calx. Above an 80% loan-to-value ratio the calculator asks for the premium your lender has given you, or your statement that your lender will not charge it, and shows no result until you answer; above 95% it asks the same and never reads the ratio as “no LMI”. An entered premium is added to the loan, the usual treatment, so it changes the loan and not the cash you need. For a first home buyer who will live in the home, the page compares the price with the Australian Government 5% Deposit Scheme property price caps published by Housing Australia. That is information about the caps only: it does not assess eligibility or approval, and it never removes LMI. No first home grant is subtracted, and settlement adjustments for rates, water and strata levies are not included. Every figure is shown with where it came from.

The Rent vs Buy calculator estimates, for a home you would live in, two net positions after the number of years you choose: buying it, or renting a comparable home and investing the difference, under assumptions you control. Each estimated net position is what that household owns less what it owes, and the result is the numerical difference between them. It is an estimate, not a recommendation to buy, rent or invest, and it does not measure anything that is not money.

The buying path at any date is the property value, less what selling it that day would cost, less the loan balance (including interest accrued but not yet charged), plus any money the buyer has invested. The property value grows at the rate you choose to test, applied monthly so each year's value is exactly the price times one plus the rate, raised to the number of years. Selling costs are always inside the buying path, not only at the end: the agent commission (a percentage of the value, including GST) and your other selling costs (grown with inflation) are worked out by the same selling cost rules the Selling Costs calculator uses. Stamp duty is worked out by the calx stamp duty calculator for your state or territory as an owner-occupier, including any first home concession on its stated conditions. Stamp duty, conveyancing, the building and pest inspection and any fees you enter are paid from the cash you enter for the purchase, and the rest is the deposit. Lenders mortgage insurance is not estimated: above an 80% loan you enter the premium, and it is added to the loan. The loan is run through the calx Home Loan Repayments ledger (daily interest, charged monthly, principal and interest, monthly repayments) at the rate you enter, held constant.

The renting path is the renter's investments. On day one the renter invests the same cash the buyer puts into the purchase, so both start with the same money. Each month both households spend the same: the buyer pays the loan repayment and the owning costs (council and water rates, insurance, strata and maintenance), and the renter pays rent. Whichever path is cheaper that month invests the difference, so in a month where renting is cheaper the renter invests, and in a month where owning is cheaper (for example once rent has risen past the repayment or after the loan is repaid) the buyer invests. Both accounts earn the after-tax return you enter, converted to an exact monthly rate; each month the balance grows first and the difference is then added. Principal repaid is not a cost: it lowers the loan balance on the buying path. Interest, stamp duty, buying costs, owning costs and selling costs are costs. Rent rises once a year at the rent growth rate; rates, insurance and strata rise once a year with inflation; maintenance each year is a percentage of the value at the start of that year.

The investment return is the after-tax return you enter, the same for both households. calx does not work out tax on investment returns, because it depends on what is invested, when it is sold and your other income. The home is assumed to be your main residence for the whole time, so no capital gains tax or land tax applies to it. Property growth has no default: until you choose a rate to test, the calculator shows the break-even growth rate, the rate at which the two paths come out equal after your chosen number of years, found by scanning growth from -5% to 15% a year and narrowing to 0.01 points. A table shows the difference at your growth rate and 2 points either side for every period from 3 to 30 years, and two strips show the home loan rate 1 point either side and the investment return 2 points either side. The equivalent rent is the weekly rent at which the two estimated net positions are equal at the chosen year. The crossover year is the first year from which the Buy estimated net position is higher in every later year through year 30; a period in which it is higher and then lower again is shown as a span and not as a crossover. Every result is shown in future dollars and in today's dollars: today's dollars divide the future figure by one plus inflation for each year, at 2.5% a year by default (the middle of the Reserve Bank's 2 to 3% target) or the rate you enter. Actual inflation may differ. Not included: offset accounts, extra repayments, refinancing, rate changes, renovations, the rental bond, moving costs, contents insurance, foreign purchaser duty, first home grants and government deposit schemes, and any estimate of future prices, rents or returns.

The calculator uses the calx stamp duty calculator, the calx Home Loan Repayments ledger and the selling cost rules of the Selling Costs calculator unchanged. calx's starting figures for costs that no authority publishes (conveyancing, inspection, rates, insurance, maintenance, commission, rent growth and inflation) are assumptions, each explained in the results under "Why these assumptions?" and each replaceable. calx sets no figure for the after-tax investment return, which you must enter, or for other selling costs and registration, settlement and lender fees, which are $0 unless you enter them. One inflation rate is used both to convert future dollars to today's dollars and to grow the costs the model links to inflation (council and water rates, building insurance, strata and other selling costs). This calculator is for general information only and is not intended to be relied on for the purposes of making a decision about a financial product. Consider obtaining advice from an Australian financial services licensee before making a financial decision.

The super calculator projects your balance year by year to retirement: employer contributions at the super guarantee rate plus any salary sacrifice, less 15% contributions tax, with investment returns, fees, inflation and salary growth applied annually. Results are shown in both nominal dollars and today's dollars. Retirement income is estimated with a real-return drawdown to age 90 and compared against the ASFA comfortable standard.

Employer contributions are the super guarantee rate on earnings up to the maximum contribution base ($270,830 for 2026-27), the most the guarantee requires an employer to pay on, and not on the part of a salary above it. The base is indexed to average weekly ordinary time earnings and future values are not published, so the projection moves it forward at your salary growth assumption, the same wage proxy the HECS/HELP calculator uses for its repayment thresholds. Salary sacrifice, your balance and investment earnings are never capped. An employer paying super on a full salary under a contract will produce a higher balance than the projection shows.

The retirement age is the age the projection runs to, and it is never changed for you. Super is generally preserved until age 60 (the preservation age for anyone born after 30 June 1964, which covers everyone young enough to enter a lower retirement age), and drawing on it also needs a condition of release such as retiring, leaving a job after 60 or turning 65. For a retirement age below 60 the calculator shows the projected balance but no retirement income from that age. Early release on hardship, compassionate or medical grounds is not modelled.

The capital gains calculator covers one disposal by an Australian resident individual of shares, ETFs, managed funds, crypto, another investment asset, or a property. It works out the capital proceeds and the cost base, applies the main residence exemption where one applies, then your capital losses, then the 50% discount to what is left.

Property is supported for four situations, each with a complete published method: an investment property that was never your home, a home that qualified for the full main residence exemption throughout, a home you later rented out after one move, and a rental you later moved into. Capital improvements go into the cost base at what they cost, and capital works deductions under Division 43 and decline in value deductions under Division 40 then come off both the cost base and the reduced cost base: the two are separate entries, not one netted figure, which is how the ATO worked example does it. A deduction can only remove expenditure actually incurred, so the cost base is never reduced below nil. Where a home starts earning income, the law treats it as bought again that day for its market value, and that value has to come from you: it is never estimated, interpolated, or taken from the purchase or sale price. Where the six-year absence rule is chosen, the calculator counts the days it covers, including any time the dwelling earned nothing, and works out the taxable share of the gain from the rest. Where it is not chosen, the whole period from the move out to the sale counts against the exemption: only that choice can treat an absence as though you still lived there, so a rental ending does not make the place your home again. Days are counted from contract date to contract date, including both, which is how the ATO counts them in its published examples.

Property cases outside that list are refused with an explanation rather than estimated: an inherited property or a deceased estate, part of a home used to earn income, moving out and back more than once, building or renovating before moving in, land over 2 hectares, a spouse or dependent child with a different main residence, overlapping main residences, a rollover, and anything bought, subdivided, built on or renovated mainly to sell at a profit. That last one is not a capital gain at all: the profit is ordinary income, and neither the discount nor the main residence exemption reduces it.

The order matters and is the part people most often get wrong. Current-year capital losses come off first, then losses carried forward from earlier years, and only then is the remaining gain halved. Applying the discount first would understate the gain. A capital loss can only reduce capital gains, never salary or other income, and anything unused carries forward.

The 50% discount needs the asset to have been acquired at least 12 months before the capital gains tax event. Taxation Determination TD 2002/10 reads that as a clear year: 365 whole days, or 366 when the year in between contains a 29 February, so the discount starts the day after the first anniversary and the anniversary itself is one day short. An asset bought on 20 June and sold on 20 June the following year does not qualify. The anniversary of a 29 February purchase is 28 February. Both dates are contract dates, not settlement dates, and the sale contract date is what decides which financial year the gain falls in.

Some sales are refused rather than estimated, and each says why. Assets bought before 20 September 1985 are outside capital gains tax, so a gain or loss on them is generally disregarded. Temporary residents are Australian residents for tax purposes but do not get the 50% discount, so their position is not priced here. Foreign residents, sales on or after 1 July 2027, and financial years before 2022-23 are refused for the reasons given on the page. An asset bought between 20 September 1985 and 21 September 1999 carries a choice between the discount and frozen cost base indexation; this calculator always applies the discount, which is the better result unless large capital losses absorb the gain, and it says so at the result.

The cost base has five elements: what you paid, the incidental costs of buying and selling, non-deductible costs of owning the asset, capital improvements, and costs of establishing or defending title. The third of those is left out when working out a capital loss, which is why proceeds can occasionally land between the two figures and produce neither a gain nor a loss. Cost base reductions, such as a tax-deferred amount shown on a managed fund statement, lower the cost base and so raise the gain.

Capital gains tax is not a separate tax and there is no capital gains tax rate. The estimated additional tax is produced by running the same annual tax calculation twice, once without the net capital gain and once with it, changing nothing else. The difference is reported as income tax, Medicare levy, Medicare levy surcharge and study loan repayment, because a gain can move all four. Your actual position depends on your complete return. The result can hand the net capital gain to the tax return tracker, which adds it to the rest of your year; the figure is the only thing carried, and whatever you had already saved in the tracker on that device is kept.

Sales from 1 July 2027 are not estimated. For gains accruing from that date the 50% discount for individuals, trusts and partnerships is replaced by cost base indexation and a minimum 30% tax on real gains, which is already law. A figure worked out under the old rules would be wrong, so the calculator says so instead of showing one.

Savings and investment growth is simulated period by period rather than with a closed-form formula, so fees and contribution timing stay exact and the year-by-year table cannot disagree with the headline. The annual return you enter is converted to a true equivalent periodic rate, which means a 6% assumption grows a starting balance by exactly 6% over a year whether you contribute weekly, fortnightly, monthly or annually. Fees reduce the return rather than being taken as a separate amount, so a 6% return with 1% fees compounds at 5%. That is a simple subtraction of the two annual percentages: a fee deducted from the balance each period would cost a little more, so the fee treatment is a close approximation rather than an exact model of how a fund charges. Inflation is applied only to produce the today's dollars figure, never to the projected balance itself.

Returns are assumed constant and smooth, which no real investment is, and no tax is modelled: income tax on interest and dividends, capital gains tax and franking credits all depend on circumstances this calculator does not ask for. Superannuation is taxed differently again and is projected separately.

The Wedding Budget calculator adds up a plan you build yourself. It opens with a starting list of categories and subcategories and no amounts, because a suggested figure would read as a benchmark calx does not have; every label can be renamed, added or removed. Each expense has its own name and a cost entered either as a flat amount or per guest. A per-guest cost is multiplied by the guest count and rounded half up to the cent; changing the guest count reprices it.

The cost of an expense is held once, and every payment recorded against it reduces only what is owing on that expense, so a deposit and later instalments never count the cost twice. For each expense, still owing is the cost less its payments, never below zero, and anything paid above the cost is shown as an overpayment on that expense. The totals are sums of each expense's own figures, worked in whole cents: the planned cost, everything paid, everything still owing and every overpayment, so an overpayment on one expense never reduces what is owing on another. Planned cost less the payments against priced expenses, plus overpayments, equals still owing, and the results show that working. Budget variance is the overall budget less the planned cost. An expense with no amount yet, or a per-guest expense before the guest count is set, is listed and counted but never priced at zero.

The plan is saved in the browser on the device. A share link carries a compact copy of the plan as a snapshot, not a live document, and is limited to 4,000 characters for the complete link; a detailed plan that would exceed it can be kept whole in a backup file made and read in the browser. Not included: supplier management, reminders, guest lists or accounts.

The Bills Calculator turns a list of regular bills into one amount to put aside each payday. Each bill is entered as the amount of one bill and how often it is charged, and converted to a year exactly: weekly bills 52 times, fortnightly 26, monthly 12, every two months 6, quarterly 4, every six months 2 and annually once. That yearly figure is divided by the number of paydays in a year (52, 26 or 12) and rounded up to the next cent, and the amount to set aside is the sum of those rounded shares. The breakdown therefore adds up to the headline exactly; the small extra from rounding up is shown, but it does not make the amount exact.

The result is an average amount to set aside, averaged over a 52-week year, not a schedule. It does not mean a bill due soon is already covered: a large bill that falls due before enough has built up needs money from elsewhere. Because an average year is about 52.18 weeks, the amount can run slightly short, especially when pay is monthly and bills are weekly or fortnightly ($500 of weekly rent set aside monthly comes to $26,000.04 a year, about $89 less than an average year's rent and $499.96 less in a year with 53 rent days). Not included: due dates, reminders, bank connections and spending that is not a bill.

• All results are estimates based on the inputs you provide. They are not financial, tax or credit advice.
• The pay calculator models annual tax liability. Actual PAYG withholding from each payslip follows ATO withholding schedules and can differ slightly, with the difference settled at tax return time.
• Family (combined) thresholds for the Medicare levy and the Medicare Levy Surcharge are modelled once you enter a spouse's taxable income or dependent children. Seniors and Pensioners Tax Offset family thresholds, and a spouse's own reportable super or fringe benefits, are not.
• The Seniors and Pensioners Tax Offset is applied as the flat single maximum of $2,230 whenever you switch it on. The real offset starts reducing once rebate income passes a threshold and stops entirely above a higher one ($36,034 and $53,874 for a single in 2026-27), and a member of a couple gets a lower maximum, so a higher-income senior can be shown more offset than they would actually receive. The calculator says so where you switch it on.
• Lender policies differ. Real borrowing power depends on how much of your variable income a lender counts, how it treats expenses, and its credit policy. calx does not estimate lenders mortgage insurance premiums; use your lender's quote.
• Stamp duty rate tables are applied to the exact price rather than per $100 or part of $100, and eligibility rules (residence periods, caps, income tests) are simplified. Always confirm with the state revenue office.
• Land tax grouping, joint ownership and secondary deduction rules, special exemptions, and surcharge edge cases are not modelled; the calculator assesses the single aggregated land value you enter.
• Super projections depend heavily on assumed returns, fees and inflation; small changes compound over decades.
• Where next year's indexed thresholds are not yet published by the ATO, prior year values are carried forward and flagged.

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