The IRD PAYE Calculator
The IRD PAYE calculator lives inside myIR and works out the deductions for one pay period at a time. It is the authoritative implementation and it is correct. It is built for an employer running a pay run, so it answers what must be deducted this payday rather than what your pay is worth across a year.
Where is the IRD PAYE calculator?
The IRD PAYE calculator is inside myIR, reached from Inland Revenue's Deductions from salary and wages page. Its full name there is the PAYE deductions from salary or wages calculator. Two things follow from where it lives, and they explain most searches that end up here.
- There is no page to read. The calculator is an application, not an article. Nothing it produces is indexed, so a search engine or an AI assistant cannot quote a result from it, and neither can you link to one.
- It is scoped to one pay period. You give it a gross amount, a tax code and a pay frequency, and it returns the deductions for that period. That is exactly what an employer needs and it is not always what an employee is asking.
Is the IRD PAYE calculator accurate?
Yes. The IRD PAYE calculator is the reference implementation, and where any calculator disagrees with it the other calculator has a bug. Inland Revenue defines the calculation, so this is not a comparison in which the other tool loses.
This site's engine exists to make the same arithmetic readable, comparable across four pay frequencies, and visible to anything that cannot log into myIR. If you find a figure here that differs from Inland Revenue's, the figure here is the one to doubt. Report it and we will correct it: contact PAYE Calculator NZ.
What does the IRD PAYE calculator actually work out?
The IRD PAYE calculator works out the deductions an employer must make from one pay period: PAYE, the 1.75% ACC earners' levy folded inside it, KiwiSaver and any student loan repayment. You give it a gross amount, a tax code and a pay frequency, and it returns that period's figures. It does not project a year, and it does not put the employer's contribution on an employee's view.
| IRD's calculator | This site | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | An employer running a pay run | An employee checking a payslip |
| Scope | One pay period | Per hour, week, fortnight, month and year |
| PAYE, ACC levy, student loan, KiwiSaver | Yes | Yes |
| Employer KiwiSaver contribution and ESCT on your payslip view | Not on an employee view | Yes, per payday |
| Reachable without logging in | Inside myIR | Yes |
| Readable by a search engine or AI assistant | No | Yes, the rules are published as text |
| Authority | Definitive | Validated against IRD's own casebook |
Seven rows, and only one is identical on both sides: the four deductions themselves. The arithmetic is the same arithmetic. What differs is who the answer is written for, and who can reach it.
Why does your payslip not match a PAYE calculator?
Your payslip does not match a PAYE calculator because the period calculation does three things on purpose, and a calculator working from an annual figure does none of them.
- It annualises the period. Your pay for this period is multiplied out to a year, taxed, then divided back down. On a variable week that overshoots, which is why is overtime taxed more looks over-taxed and is settled at the end of the year.
- It does not apply the $156,641 ACC cap. The annual ACC earners' levy is capped at $2,741.22, but the period calculation charges 1.75% on the period as though the cap were not there. A high earner therefore pays more levy across the year than the cap and is squared up afterwards. This site reproduces that divergence rather than smoothing it, because the payslip is what people are checking.
- It works on the employer's obligation, not your outcome. The employer's 3.5% KiwiSaver contribution and the ESCT charged on it are real money attached to your job, and they sit outside a take-home figure.
How is this calculator checked against Inland Revenue's own figures?
This calculator is checked against Inland Revenue's own figures by reproducing every row of the Payday Software Developers Casebook 2026–27. Those rows are assertions in the test suite rather than a claim in prose, so the build fails if a figure moves. One of them, computed live on this page:
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Weekly gross | $926.28 |
| Tax code | M |
| PAYE for the week, from this engine | $157.30 |
The same specification fixes the details that separate a correct payslip from an approximation. Inland Revenue truncates rather than rounds, and it does so at defined points inside the pay period rather than annually. A calculator that computes an annual figure and divides by 52 will be out by cents on every payslip, which is exactly the amount people check.
What is the Payday Software Developers Casebook?
The Payday Software Developers Casebook is the document Inland Revenue publishes so payroll software vendors can check their calculations against worked examples with exact expected outputs. It is the nearest thing New Zealand has to an official payroll test suite.
Each case fixes an input set and the single figure that must come out of it, which is what makes it usable as a test rather than as guidance. The 2026–27 edition is the one this engine is held to, and every row of it passes on every build.
What happens if you have not given your employer an IR330?
If you have not given your employer an IR330, your employer must deduct at the non-notified rate of 45% plus the ACC earners' levy, under code ND. This is the one case that defeats every calculator including Inland Revenue's, because ND is not a tax code in the normal sense.
Check which code is printed on the payslip before assuming an error. If your deductions look far too high and no tax code you try reproduces them, the code is the first thing to look at. See deductions from your pay.
What changed in the IRD PAYE calculation for 2026–27?
What changed in the IRD PAYE calculation on 1 April 2026 is the ACC earners' levy. The rate rose from 1.67% to 1.75%, the earnings it is charged on moved from $152,790 to $156,641, and the annual cap went from $2,551.59 to $2,741.22, a rise of $189.63. Because PAYE bundles the levy with income tax, every weekly PAYE figure moved with it.
KiwiSaver moved on the same day. The default employee rate and the compulsory employer contribution are both 3.5%, which also lifts the ESCT an employer works out each payday. Both rise again to 4% on 1 April 2028.
Income tax brackets did not change. The five bands have run unchanged since 31 July 2024, and the student loan threshold holds at $24,128 with a 12% repayment rate. The rates changelog records each figure and the date it moved.
Which related calculators do the same job without a myIR login?
- MethodologyWhat this engine deliberately does not model
- How PAYE Is CalculatedThe calculation itself, step by step
- Official sourcesEvery figure and where it came from
- Tax code finderThe input that changes everything else
- take-home pay calculatorRun your own numbers
Common questions
Where is the IRD PAYE calculator?
The IRD PAYE calculator is a tool inside myIR, reached from Inland Revenue's "Deductions from salary and wages" page. It is not a public page you can link a result from, and nothing it produces is indexed.
Is the IRD PAYE calculator accurate?
Yes, it is the reference implementation. Where any calculator disagrees with it, the other one is wrong. The useful question is whether it answers your question, since it is built around a single pay period.
Why does my payslip not match a PAYE calculator?
Usually the per-period arithmetic. Inland Revenue truncates rather than rounds at defined points, so an annual calculation divided by 52 drifts by cents. The other causes are the ACC levy cap, which the period calculation does not apply, and a payroll giving credit reducing the PAYE line.
What is the Payday Software Developers Casebook?
The document Inland Revenue publishes so payroll vendors can check their calculations against worked examples with exact expected outputs. It is the closest thing to an official test suite for New Zealand payroll, and this site's engine reproduces every row of the 2026–27 edition.
Can the IRD calculator show my KiwiSaver employer contribution and ESCT?
It works from the employer's point of view, so ESCT is part of what an employer works out with it. What no take-home pay calculator does is show the employer contribution and the ESCT on your own payslip view, per payday, beside your PAYE.
Written by Nathan Kerr, payroll writer and editor2026–27 rates. Last reviewed 25 August 2026.
Where these figures come from
2026–27 tax year (1 April 2026 – 31 March 2027). Last verified 25 August 2026.
Related
- MethodologyWhat this engine models, and what it does not
- How PAYE Is CalculatedThe formula, step by step
- Official sourcesEvery figure, and the page it came from
- Rates changelogEvery figure, and the date it changed
- take-home pay calculatorThis site's calculator