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PAYE Calculator NZ

Nathan Kerr

Payroll writer and editor. Auckland - 14 years in payroll - Writing here since 2026
14 years in payrollPayroll bureau trainedIn-house payroll leadPAYE, KiwiSaver and Holidays Act
14

Years in New Zealand payroll

Bureau and in-house, since 2012

81

Pages written and maintained

Every one rendering from one rates file

2026–27

Tax year on every figure

Last verified 25 August 2026

Educational, not advice

Educational, not advice. Nathan writes general information about how New Zealand pay is calculated. Every figure is an estimate built from Inland Revenue's published rates, meant to help you understand your payslip rather than to replace advice about your own circumstances.

About Nathan

Nathan Kerr has worked in New Zealand payroll since 2012, first in a Wellington payroll bureau running pay runs for around forty small employers, later in-house for a national retailer with staff across every region and every award variation you can think of.

That is where his interest in this started. A payroll bureau spends a surprising amount of its week explaining a payslip to the person who received it, and the explanations that work are never the ones that quote the legislation. They are the ones that walk the number back to where it came from. Fourteen years of doing that is the whole qualification claimed here.

The recurring frustration was that the hardest questions had the worst public answers. Inland Revenue publishes the rule correctly and then buries half of it in a PDF or a myIR wizard a search engine cannot read. Secondary sources copy the first half and drop the second. So a person searching for what their final pay should be finds ten confident pages, several of which are wrong in the same direction.

This site is the attempt at the other thing. Every figure renders from one rates file that is checked against Inland Revenue and Employment New Zealand, every calculation is tested against the official worked examples, and where a rule has a second half, the second half is on the page.

“Nobody argues with their payslip because they distrust the arithmetic. They argue because nobody has ever shown them where the number came from.”

Experience

  1. 2012 to 2018

    Payroll bureau, Wellington

    Ran fortnightly and monthly pay runs for around forty small employers, from three-person cafes to a 200-seat contact centre. Every tax code, every mid-year rate change, every payday filing deadline.

  2. 2018 to 2025

    In-house payroll, national retailer

    Payroll lead for staff across every region, covering shift loadings, public holiday entitlements, final pays and the annual Holidays Act reconciliation.

  3. 2026 to now

    PAYE Calculator NZ

    Writes the guides, the tax code pages and the glossary, and maintains the rates file every calculation on the site reads from.

Where the knowledge comes from

Payroll bureau practice
Six years processing pay for employers who had no payroll department of their own, which is where the odd cases live.
Holidays Act reconciliation
Seven annual reconciliations in-house, including the leave calculations most payroll software gets approximately right.
Ongoing rate tracking
Follows every Inland Revenue and Employment New Zealand rate change through the 1 April cycle, and records each one on the rates changelog with its effective date.

Subject proficiency

  • PAYE and tax codesExpert
  • KiwiSaver and ESCTExpert
  • Holiday pay and final payExpert
  • Student loan deductionsAdvanced
  • Secondary tax and extra payAdvanced
  • Working for FamiliesAdvanced

Areas covered

PAYENew Zealand payrollTax codesKiwiSaverEmployer superannuation contribution taxStudent loan repaymentsHoliday pay and final payWorking for Families

Every figure on this site is cross-checked against Inland Revenue and Employment New Zealand guidance and updated whenever a rate changes. The rates changelog records each change with the date it took effect.

Recent work

Corrections

If a figure on this site is wrong, it gets fixed and the change is recorded on the rates changelog with the date. Corrections go to corrections@payecalculatornz.co.nz. Naming the page and the figure is enough. Working out which source is right is this side's job, not yours.

Nathan Kerr, payroll writer and editor, in his Auckland office

Nathan Kerr

Payroll writer and editor

Auckland, New Zealand

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