New Zealand take-home pay for 2026–27: what the calculator includes

Start by checking whether the payroll branch is supported

The calculator does not choose a tax code from personal circumstances. It starts only after the reader has confirmed M or M SL and entered gross PAYE income for one of the four supported pay frequencies.

KiwiSaver is also an explicit input. No employee deduction, 3.5%, 4%, 6%, 8% and 10% are supported choices. The 3% choice is available only when a valid temporary rate reduction has already been confirmed.

Bounded New Zealand payroll coverage for 2026–27
Input decision	Supported choices	What Wage101 does not decide
Main-income tax code	M or M SL	Which code is correct for the worker or whether a special certificate applies.
Pay frequency	Weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly or monthly	How to convert an irregular, changed-period or unsupported payment.
Employee KiwiSaver	None; 3.5%, 4%, 6%, 8% or 10%; confirmed temporary 3%	Membership, eligibility or temporary-reduction approval.
Payment type	Ordinary employee gross pay for one period	Extra pay, termination pay, schedular payments or payroll filing treatment.

Follow the supported deductions without counting ACC twice

The calculator annualises the entered period pay, applies the reviewed income-tax and ACC calculation, and converts the result back to the selected period using the production truncation sequence. The displayed PAYE amount already includes the ACC earners’ levy.

When M SL is selected, the standard student-loan deduction is calculated above the reviewed threshold for that pay period. The explicit employee KiwiSaver amount is then added to PAYE and any supported student-loan amount before total deductions are subtracted from gross pay.

How to read the deduction lines
Line	Role in the result	Interpretation boundary
Income-tax component	Tax portion separated for explanation	It is already part of PAYE including ACC.
ACC component	Employee earners’ levy portion	Do not add it again to the PAYE figure.
Student loan	Standard M SL period deduction	M returns zero; special rates and certificates are excluded.
Employee KiwiSaver	Gross period pay multiplied by the explicit supported rate	Employer KiwiSaver and ESCT are outside this take-home result.

NZ$2,000 fortnightly produces NZ$1,587 in the production example

The calculator-aligned scenario uses NZ$2,000 of fortnightly gross pay, confirmed tax code M and a 3.5% employee KiwiSaver rate. M means that no student-loan deduction is included in this example.

calculator-aligned New Zealand payroll example
Step or output	Exact value	What the row means
Annualised taxable income	NZ$52,000	NZ$2,000 multiplied by 26 fortnightly periods and processed by the calculator.
Income-tax component	NZ$308.00/fortnight	Income-tax portion of the supported PAYE result.
ACC component	NZ$35.00/fortnight	Shown separately for explanation but already inside PAYE.
PAYE including ACC	NZ$343.00/fortnight	NZ$308 income tax plus NZ$35 ACC; do not add ACC again.
Student-loan deduction	NZ$0.00	The confirmed code is M rather than M SL.
Employee KiwiSaver	NZ$70.00	NZ$2,000 multiplied by the confirmed 3.5% rate.
Total supported deductions	NZ$413.00	NZ$343 PAYE including ACC plus NZ$70 KiwiSaver.
Bounded take-home pay	NZ$1,587.00/fortnight	Gross pay less the supported deductions in this scenario.

M and M SL answer different confirmed payroll scenarios

M SL adds the standard main-income student-loan calculation to the M payroll path. Wage101 does not infer an SL code from the presence of a loan, and it does not support special deduction rates, exemptions or compulsory extra repayments.

Changing the code is therefore not a sensitivity experiment. It represents a different payroll record that should be selected only after checking current Inland Revenue guidance or the worker’s confirmed tax-code information.

Know why a payslip can differ from the bounded estimate

The calculator deliberately covers a smaller set of branches than a payroll system. A difference may reflect an unsupported tax code, certificate, irregular payment, other deduction, prior adjustment or employer payroll record rather than an arithmetic error in the visible scenario.

No ME/IETC, secondary, tailored, ND, NSW, CAE, EDW, WT or other tax-code branch.
No daily, three-weekly, half-monthly, changed-period or irregular-pay calculation.
No special student-loan rate, exemption, compulsory extra or voluntary repayment.
No extra pay, bonus, termination, child support, benefit, reimbursement or payroll correction.
No employer KiwiSaver, ESCT, payroll filing, annual reconciliation, refund or final liability.

Use the current ordinary-payroll source, not a lump-sum shortcut

The load-bearing evidence is Inland Revenue’s Payroll Calculations and Business Rules Specification for 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027, with the supported PAYE-table and component evidence recorded in Wage101’s policy dependency.

A lump-sum-payment guide and a minimum-wage page do not support this ordinary-payroll calculation. Recheck the official specification, tax-code guidance and calculator methodology when the period, code or payment type falls outside the bounded branch.