Papua New Guinea income tax rates
Annual marginal rates of income tax on the taxable income of a RESIDENT individual, set by Schedule 1, Part I, Clause (1) of the Income Tax Act 2025 (in force 1 January 2026). PNG collects the great majority of this as fortnightly salary and wages tax withheld by employers.
| Current value | 5 entries — see the API for the full schedule |
|---|---|
| In force from | 2026-01-01 |
| Official source | Income Tax Act 2025 (Papua New Guinea), Schedule 1 'Tax Rates and Specified Amounts', Part I Clause (1) — 'The rates of income tax applicable to a resident individual for a tax year are': not exceeding K20,000, 0%; exceeds K20,000 but not K33,000, 30%; exceeds K33,000 but not K70,000, 35%; exceeds K70,000 but not K250,000, 40%; exceeds K250,000, 42%. Certified fair print signed by the Clerk and Speaker of the National Parliament, 20 October 2025; commences 1 January 2026 (s.165(1)) |
| Last verified | 2026-07-23 |
| Verification | primary — No verification limitation recorded — read from the official source cited. |
| Provenance | source fingerprint |
What this value means
Resident individuals. The K20,000 TAX-FREE THRESHOLD is the key fact and it is now permanent: it was first introduced as a temporary cost-of-living measure effective 1 January 2024 (NEC Decision No. 327/2023 of 21 November 2023) and repeatedly extended year by year; the 2026 National Budget made it permanent and reinstated dependant rebates, at a cost of K320 million a year and a saving of up to K63 per fortnight for most earners on K20,000 and above (2026 National Budget Vol 1). It is now hard-coded in the statute rather than renewed annually, so the annual-extension watch that applied in 2024 and 2025 is no longer needed. NON-RESIDENT INDIVIDUALS are on the SAME bands but get NO tax-free threshold — Clause (2) charges 22% on the first K20,000 and is otherwise identical (30/35/40/42). This is the '22% bracket reinstated from 1 January 2026' referred to in 2026 Budget commentary; it is a non-resident bracket only and must never be applied to residents. FORTNIGHTLY WITHHOLDING SCHEDULE, Clause (3) for resident employees (Clause (4) is the non-resident mirror, 22% on the first band): 0% up to K770; 30% K770-K1,270; 35% K1,270-K2,693; 40% K2,693-K9,615; 42% above K9,615. Employers withhold under s.149 and Schedule 6; where the employee has lodged an employment declaration the fortnightly withholding formula is (A x B) - C/26, where C is the dependant tax credit; where no declaration is lodged, the MAXIMUM rate applies to the whole payment. Where s.161 applies, the withholding is a FINAL tax and no return is required. Concessional rates sit outside the bands: redundancy concessional component 15%; long service leave 2% at 15+ years of service, capped at 8% (9-15 years) and 15% (5-9 years); approved superannuation pay-outs 2% at 15+ years of contributions or on disability/death. Note the 2026 Budget records that the certified copy of the Income Tax Act 2025 CONTAINED AN ERROR — it retained the 2.0% tax on superannuation withdrawals for retirees with over 15 years of service that the 2025 Budget had intended to eliminate — and that a corrective amendment effective 1 January 2026 was to restore the exemption; verify against the amending Act before relying on the superannuation figures. The Act repealed the Income Tax (Salary and Wages Tax) (Rates) Act 1979 outright (s.163), so the rates now live in the Act itself and no longer in a separate annual rating Act. ACCESS: same as corporate-tax — parliament.gov.pg has an expired TLS certificate, the certified Act PDF is a 128-page image-only scan requiring visual reading, and irc.gov.pg 403s all external traffic so the IRC's own fortnightly tax tables could not be retrieved.
Get it programmatically
curl https://ausref.dev/v1/pg/income-tax
# $0.001 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History: curl https://ausref.dev/v1/pg/income-tax/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://ausref.dev/provenance/pg/income-taxOther Papua New Guinea series: policy interest rate · VAT rate · minimum wage · public holidays · inflation rate (CPI) · corporate tax rate