ESCT Rates 2026–27

What are the ESCT rates for 2026–27?

The first two columns are the statutory rates. The last two are the ones that answer the question people are actually asking, and no other page publishes them. The effective employer rate is what is left of the 3.5% minimum contribution after ESCT, measured against gross pay. What $100 delivers is the same arithmetic in dollars: hand $100 of employer contribution to the rules and that is what lands in the fund.

The spread matters more than it looks. At the bottom band an employer contribution is worth 3.13% of gross pay. At the top band the same headline 3.5% is worth 2.14%. In dollars, $89.50 of every $100 contributed reaches the fund in the first band, against $61.00 in the fifth, on an identical employment agreement.

How much ESCT is payable on a given contribution?

The reckoner a pay run needs. Find the contribution down the side, read across to the employee's ESCT rate, and the cell is the tax withheld. Every cell runs through the same whole-dollar truncation a payroll system applies, so these are the figures to check a pay run against rather than the figures a calculator would give you.

Contributions in this table are illustrative amounts, not statutory figures. The rates and the truncation are both statutory.

Which ESCT rate applies at a band edge?

Each threshold amount is an inclusive ceiling. A threshold amount of exactly $64,200 sits in the 17.5% band. One dollar more moves it to 30%. This is the only place a pay run goes wrong on a correct threshold amount, and it is exactly where someone checking a figure is standing.

Note what pushes an employee over an edge. The threshold amount includes the gross employer superannuation contributions, so a salary sitting just under a ceiling can be tipped above it by the contribution itself. On a 3.5% contribution, a salary of $62,029 already reaches $64,200 once the contribution is added.

How is your ESCT rate threshold amount worked out?

Inland Revenue publishes this rule as a step-through tool rather than as a table, so it is hard to read and impossible to quote. Written out, it has exactly two branches, and which one applies depends on a single fact: whether the employee worked for this employer for the whole of the previous tax year.

Three consequences follow, and all three catch people out. The rate is fixed for the whole tax year, so a promotion in September changes nothing until 1 April. Two colleagues on identical salaries can sit on different ESCT rates, because one of them earned less a year ago. And because the employer contributions are inside the threshold amount, a salary sitting just below a band edge can be pushed over it by the contribution itself.

Why do the ESCT bands not match the income tax brackets?

The ESCT thresholds look almost like the income tax brackets, and people reasonably assume one is a typo of the other. They are not. Every finite ESCT threshold is the income tax threshold at the same position multiplied by 1.2, and the rate attached to each is identical.

The practical use of this is checking a table you found somewhere else. If its ESCT thresholds are not the current income tax brackets times 1.2, it is out of date. The superseded set below is the pre-31-July-2024 brackets grossed up the same way, which is precisely why it still looks credible.

What is the whole-dollar rule, and why does it change the answer?

Before the rate is applied, the employer contribution is truncated to whole dollars. Not rounded. Truncated, with the cents discarded for the purposes of the calculation. This happens on every pay period, which is why annual ESCT is never exactly the annual contribution times the rate, and why a weekly payroll and a monthly payroll produce different annual totals on the same salary.

The cents are not lost. The full $123.45 still goes into the account. Only the tax base is truncated, so the effect is a few cents a year in the employee's favour. It matters because it is the reason a hand calculation disagrees with a payslip, and because no other page publishing an ESCT table mentions it at all.

Why do 26 fortnights not equal one year?

Payroll truncates each period's contribution to whole dollars before the rate applies. The cents are not taxed, and they are not lost either: they still go into the fund. On $70,000, the same annual contribution produces a different yearly ESCT total depending on how often the employee is paid.

Calculated in one lump the annual figure is $735.00. Every row above differs from it, and every row is correct. On a $70,000 salary with the 3.5% minimum contribution the ESCT rate is 30%, from a threshold amount of $72,450.00.

Why does a correct ESCT figure still differ from payroll?

Before concluding a pay run has it wrong, rule these out. All three produce a genuine difference between a correct hand calculation and a correct pay run.

• The threshold amount is a year behind. A rise from below $64,200 to above it does not change the ESCT rate until the next 1 April. Enter last year's figures in the calculator above to reproduce what payroll did.
• Each payday is truncated separately. Truncation removes tax, not contribution, so a payday total always comes out at or below the figure calculated in one lump. On this example the largest gap across a whole year is $1.80, in the employee's favour. Which cycle loses most is not a matter of frequency: it depends on where the cents happen to fall, which is why three of the four rows above land on the same total.
• A voluntary contribution above the minimum. ESCT applies to the whole employer contribution, not only the compulsory 3.5%. An employer matching at a higher rate pays ESCT on all of it, so the figure scales with the contribution rather than with the salary.

Which published ESCT tables are out of date?

Who uses these ESCT rates?

• Payroll administrators, at 1 April. The ESCT rate threshold amount is set once a year for every employee, and the rate it produces holds for all twelve months. Getting it wrong at setup means every pay run that year carries the same error.
• Employers checking a payroll system. The reckoner above and the band-edge table are the two checks worth running against any system output, because both edges and truncation are where correct systems and correct hand calculations diverge.
• Employees checking a KiwiSaver statement. The contribution that arrives is smaller than 3.5% of gross pay, and the effective rate column says by how much. What ESCT is and why it never appears on a payslip is on employer superannuation contribution tax.
• Anyone auditing a stale table. The gross-up test above settles it in one step: current income tax brackets times 1.2, or the table is out of date.

What changed for ESCT in 2026–27?

Nothing, and that is the answer worth publishing. The five rates are 10.5%, 17.5%, 30%, 33% and 39%, exactly as they were. The thresholds are $18,720, $64,200, $93,720 and $216,000, unchanged since they took effect on 1 April 2025.

One dated change is already legislated and it is not an ESCT change. The compulsory employer contribution rises from 3.5% to 4% on 1 April 2028. ESCT rates do not move, but the amount they are charged on does, so every ESCT figure on this page rises with it.

Which related calculators help with ESCT and KiwiSaver?

• KiwiSaver employer contribution calculatorYour ESCT rate, the tax on each contribution, and what reaches the fund per payday
• employer superannuation contribution taxThe tax that never appears on your payslip
• KiwiSaver employer contributionThe 3.5% minimum, who gets it, and when it stops
• salary sacrifice and total remunerationWhen the contribution comes out of your salary rather than on top

What else do people ask about ESCT rates?

Where these figures come from

• IRD. Employer superannuation contribution tax
• IRD. Employer contributions to KiwiSaver

2026–27 tax year (1 April 2026 – 31 March 2027). Last verified 25 August 2026.

Where else is ESCT explained?

• employer superannuation contribution taxThe tax on your employer's KiwiSaver contribution
• KiwiSaver employer contribution calculatorYour contribution, theirs, and ESCT, per payday
• KiwiSaver employer contributionThe 3.5% minimum ESCT is charged on
• New Zealand tax bracketsThe bands the ESCT thresholds are derived from
• New Zealand PAYE tax ratesIncome tax and the ACC levy as one combined rate
• is KiwiSaver taxedWhere ESCT sits among the three taxes on KiwiSaver
• how to read a New Zealand payslipEvery line, and why ESCT is not one of them
• KiwiSaver contribution rates3.5% default, plus 4, 6, 8 and 10%