Australia Statutory social-insurance contributions

What this value means

THE HEADLINE TRAP: Australia has NO employee-side statutory social-insurance deduction at all. There is no employee pension contribution, no unemployment-insurance contribution, and no health-insurance contribution. A gross-to-net engine for Australia deducts PAYG income tax withholding and nothing else in the social-insurance column. Every mandatory branch in this country is employer-side. THE MEDICARE LEVY IS INCOME TAX, NOT A CONTRIBUTION. This is the single most common error. The Medicare levy is imposed at 2% of TAXABLE INCOME by Medicare Levy Act 1986 s 6(1) ("The rate of levy payable by a person upon a taxable income is 2%"), assessed on the individual's annual tax return alongside income tax, not levied on gross pay and not matched by the employer. It is not hypothecated to any insurance fund and confers no contributory entitlement. Modelling it as a social-security contribution overstates the employee contribution burden and, worse, produces the wrong net pay, because it is not computed on gross earnings: Medicare Levy Act 1986 s 7 gives full relief where taxable income does not exceed the threshold amount and a phase-in above it, with the threshold amounts in s 3(1) being $28,011 generally and $44,268 for a person entitled to the seniors and pensioners tax offset (Compilation No. 53, in force 1 July 2026, as amended by Act No. 58 of 2026 — these thresholds are re-legislated annually and are typically enacted retrospectively for the year just ended, so pin the income year carefully). A separate Medicare levy surcharge of 1%–1.5% (ss 8B–8G) applies to higher-income individuals without private hospital cover; also income tax, also individual-assessed. In practice the levy is collected through the PAYG withholding schedules, which is why payroll vendors mistake it for a contribution — but the withholding tables are an approximation of an income-tax liability, not a contribution rate. PAYDAY SUPER — THE STRUCTURAL BREAK. The whole SG regime was rewritten by the Treasury Laws Amendment (Payday Superannuation) Act 2025 (C2025A00057, assent 6 November 2025), commencing 1 July 2026. Any dataset built before that date is now structurally wrong, not merely stale. Four things changed at once: (1) frequency — SG must be RECEIVED by the fund within 7 business days of each payday (SGAA 1992 s 6(1) "usual period"), replacing quarterly payment 28 days after quarter end; (2) the base changed from "ordinary time earnings" to "qualifying earnings" (s 10A(1)), which now expressly sweeps in commissions and salary-sacrificed amounts; (3) the maximum contributions base moved from a QUARTERLY earnings amount to an ANNUAL cumulative one (s 10A(5)–(6)); and (4) the rate table was deleted from the Act entirely. CONSOLIDATED-TEXT POSITION — CLEAN, BUT ONLY BECAUSE THE ACT WAS REWRITTEN. There is no statute-versus-authority conflict in Australia right now. SGAA 1992 s 17A(2) states flatly "charge percentage means 12", and the ATO rate page agrees at 12.00%. Worth knowing WHY: the old s 19(2) contained a year-by-year step-up table (9.5% ... 10.5%, 11%, 11.5%, 12%) that was the classic stale-consolidation hazard here; it has been repealed. Consequence for maintenance: there is now no legislated further increase — the 12% reached on 1 July 2025 is the terminal rate, and any future rise requires fresh primary legislation, so this value should not be expected to drift. WHERE THE EXCLUSIONS ACTUALLY LIVE — A REAL RETRIEVAL TRAP. The former s 27 ("salary or wages not to be taken into account") has been repealed. Exclusions are now delegated: SGAA 1992 s 10A(3)(b) empowers regulations, and the operative list is in the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Regulations 2018, Compilation No. 8 (compilation date 1 July 2026, incorporating F2026L00133) — reg 11 for kinds of EMPLOYEES, reg 12 for kinds of EARNINGS. Reading only the Act will make you conclude, wrongly, that there are no exclusions. The material ones: reg 11(f) excludes "a part-time employee who is under 18", where s 6(1) defines part-time employee as employed to work not more than 30 hours per week; reg 12(1)(j) excludes domestic or private work of not more than 30 hours per week; reg 12(1)(f) excludes fringe benefits; reg 12(1)(a) excludes employer-funded parental leave payments; reg 12(1)(g) excludes payments to a non-resident for work done outside Australia; reg 11(a)–(e) exclude certain senior foreign executives on subclass 400, 456, 457 and 482 visas. Per ATO SGD 93/1, the 30-hour test is the ACTUAL hours worked in that specific week and must not be averaged across a fortnightly or monthly pay cycle — so a 17-year-old can be SG-eligible in one week and not the next, under the same contract. CEILING VERSUS THRESHOLD — DO NOT CONFLATE. Australia has both, and they are unrelated mechanisms. The CEILING is the maximum contributions base of $270,830 for 2026-27 (s 10A(5)): an earnings cap, applied per employer, cumulative across the financial year, automatic, above which SG simply stops accruing. The THRESHOLD is the employer shortfall exemption certificate under SGAA 1992 s 17C: a high-income earner with MULTIPLE employers may APPLY to the Commissioner to opt out in respect of one or more nominated employers, to avoid breaching the concessional contributions cap; where a certificate is in force, s 17B deems the employee to have already reached the maximum contributions base, driving the SG amount to nil for that employer only. One is arithmetic and automatic; the other is elective, per-employer, certificate-driven and must be evidenced. There is separately NO lower earnings floor — the $450-per-month de minimis was abolished on 1 July 2022 and any engine still carrying it will under-pay low-income and casual employees. DEDUCTIBILITY. The question is largely inapplicable in the ordinary case because there is no employee contribution to deduct. Employer SG contributions are deductible to the EMPLOYER and are not assessable income of the employee; they are taxed at 15% inside the fund rather than at the employee's marginal rate. Where an employee salary-sacrifices into super, the sacrificed amount reduces assessable income before PAYG withholding is computed — economically equivalent to a deductible employee contribution, and it now also counts as qualifying earnings for SG (s 10A(1)(h)), so sacrificing does NOT reduce the employer's SG obligation. Very high earners face an additional 15% Division 293 tax on concessional contributions, but that is assessed on the individual by the ATO after year-end and is never withheld through payroll. NATIONALITY AND RESIDENCE. Liability does NOT depend on nationality or on visa status in the general case — the ATO confirms temporary residents, working holiday makers and backpackers are all SG-eligible. Residence matters only at the edges: no SG for a non-resident employee working outside Australia; no SG where a bilateral social security agreement and a certificate of coverage apply; and no SG for the narrow senior-foreign-executive visa classes in reg 11. Conversely, Australian employees posted temporarily overseas remain SG-covered. Category-dependent liability is real but is driven by AGE and HOURS (under 18 plus 30 hours) and by work type (domestic/private), not by citizenship. Independent contractors paid wholly or principally for their labour are SG-eligible on the labour component even when they quote an ABN — a large and frequently missed exposure. SCOPE EXCLUSIONS: self-employed sole traders and partners owe no SG on their own account; ADF reservists are outside SG for reserve service; the Commonwealth and tax-exempt Commonwealth authorities sit under a separate Part of the Act. SUB-NATIONAL VARIATION: Superannuation Guarantee is a Commonwealth scheme and is UNIFORM across all states and territories, with ONE exception: AU-NF (Norfolk Island), where a transitional rate of 11% applies for 2026-27 against 12% on the mainland, rising to 12% on 1 July 2027. This is the only sub-national variation in the SG rate itself; the maximum contributions base and the 7-business-day payment deadline are identical everywhere. Employer-side STATE taxes vary substantially and are genuinely per-jurisdiction: - AU-NSW: payroll tax 5.45%, annual tax-free threshold $1,200,000 for 2026-27 (verified, Revenue NSW). - AU-VIC: payroll tax 4.85%, or 1.2125% for regional Victorian employers; maximum annual deduction $1,000,000, phasing out at 50% between $3,000,000 and $5,000,000 of Australian wages, nil above $5,000,000; plus a mental health and wellbeing surcharge and a COVID-19 debt surcharge, combined 1% above $10m national payroll and 2% above $100m (verified, SRO Victoria). - AU-QLD, AU-WA, AU-SA, AU-TAS, AU-ACT, AU-NT: each sets its own rate and threshold under its own Payroll Tax Act; deliberately NOT enumerated here and no figures asserted. Queensland additionally imposes a mental health levy on large payrolls. Workers' compensation varies by jurisdiction AND by employer within each jurisdiction: eight separate statutory schemes (NSW icare/SIRA, WorkSafe Victoria, WorkCover Queensland, WorkCover WA, ReturnToWorkSA, WorkSafe Tasmania, WorkSafe ACT, NT WorkSafe) plus the Commonwealth Comcare scheme for eligible national employers, with premiums risk-rated by industry classification and claims experience. No uniform rate exists at any level. One cross-jurisdiction subtlety that bites even uniform SG: the 'business day' used for the 7-day payment deadline excludes any day that is a public holiday for the whole of ANY State, the ACT or the NT (SGAA 1992 s 6(1)). The SG due date therefore depends on the union of all eight jurisdictions' holiday calendars, not on the calendar of the state where the employee works. WHAT WE DO NOT PUT A NUMBER ON: 1. Medicare levy is NOT returned as a contribution scheme. It is income tax imposed on taxable income by the Medicare Levy Act 1986, individually assessed with income-tested relief, unmatched by any employer share and unconnected to any insurance fund. Its rate (2%) and thresholds are given in notes so a buyer has the number, but classifying it as social insurance would be a category error and would corrupt any employee-contribution total. 2. State and territory payroll tax: rate_employer and rate_total returned NULL. There is no national rate — eight jurisdictions legislate independently and the spread is wide (NSW 5.45% on wages above $1.2m; Victoria 4.85%, or 1.2125% regional, with a $1m deduction phasing out between $3m and $5m). Only NSW and Victoria were verified against their own revenue authorities; the remaining six jurisdictions were deliberately not enumerated and no figure is asserted for them. 3. Workers' compensation: all rates returned NULL. Premium is employer-specific — set by industry classification, declared wages and, above a size threshold, individual claims experience, under eight separate state/territory schemes plus Comcare. There is no national, or even state-wide, single rate to quote, and self-insurance is available in several jurisdictions. Any single number here would be invented. 4. Superannuation fund choice: no default contribution rate above 12% is asserted. Many enterprise agreements and some industry funds provide more than the statutory minimum, but that is contractual, not statutory, and varies per employer. 5. Norfolk Island: the 11% figure is taken from the ATO rate table and from ATO guidance. The underlying transitional provision (Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (Norfolk Island Reforms) Act 2015 sch 2 item 2, as amended by C2025A00057 sch 1 item 150) was identified from the SGAA endnotes but its operative text was not read line by line; the rate itself is confirmed twice on the administering authority's own pages. 6. Medicare levy threshold amounts ($28,011 / $44,268) were read directly from the Medicare Levy Act 1986 compilation in force 1 July 2026, but the income year to which they attach was not independently confirmed — these thresholds are uprated annually by a separate Act and are commonly enacted retrospectively for the preceding income year. Treat the income-year mapping as unverified. ALREADY LEGISLATED, NOT YET IN FORCE: 1. NORFOLK ISLAND SG RATE — LEGISLATED, DATED. The Norfolk Island transitional rate rises from 11% to 12%, reaching parity with the mainland, on 1 July 2027 (ATO 'Super guarantee' Table 21, general column 12.00 and Norfolk column 12 for '1 July 2027 onwards'). Instrument: Tax and Superannuation Laws Amendment (Norfolk Island Reforms) Act 2015 (C2015A00053) sch 2 item 2 as amended. Re-verify deadline: 1 July 2027. 2. MAXIMUM CONTRIBUTIONS BASE — AUTOMATIC ANNUAL MOVEMENT. The ceiling is now a derived value, not a published one: SGAA 1992 s 10A(5) computes it as (basic concessional contributions cap x 100 / 12), rounded down to the nearest $10. It therefore moves whenever the concessional cap is indexed to AWOTE under ITAA 1997 Div 291, which happens in $2,500 increments and is normally announced by the ATO in February for the following 1 July. The cap moved to $32,500 on 1 July 2026 (from $30,000, where it had sat since 1 July 2024), giving $270,830. Re-verify deadline: late February 2027, for the value effective 1 July 2027. Because the ceiling is now formula-derived, an engine can compute it directly from the concessional cap rather than waiting for a published table. 3. GENERAL SG RATE — NO FURTHER INCREASE LEGISLATED. The step-up schedule terminated at 12% on 1 July 2025 and s 17A(2) now fixes the charge percentage as a bare '12' with no forward table. Any further rise requires new primary legislation. This value should be treated as stable. 4. VICTORIAN COVID-19 DEBT PAYROLL TAX SURCHARGE — SUNSET. Applies until 30 June 2033 (State Revenue Office Victoria). The Victorian mental health and wellbeing surcharge has no sunset. 5. MEDICARE LEVY LOW-INCOME THRESHOLDS — ANNUAL. Re-legislated each year (Act No. 4 of 2024, No. 28 of 2025, No. 58 of 2026 in sequence), typically enacted after the income year has ended. Expect a further amending Act in 2027. Researched against primary instruments and independently challenged by a second verification pass before being served (2026-08-08). Employee and employer shares are stated separately: the employee figure is what leaves the payslip, the employer figure is cost of employment and is not a deduction.

Get it programmatically

curl https://ausref.dev/v1/au/social-contributions
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://ausref.dev/v1/au/social-contributions/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://ausref.dev/provenance/au/social-contributions

Other Australia series: Cash Rate Target · Statutory late-payment interest · Goods and Services Tax (GST) · VAT registration threshold · National Minimum Wage · Public Holidays · Consumer Price Index (annual, All groups) · Company Tax Rate · Withholding tax rates · Personal Income Tax Rates (residents)

The same figure elsewhere: Fiji · New Zealand · Papua New Guinea · Samoa · Solomon Islands · all 8