"Will my pay rise push me into a new HECS bracket?" usually means "will I somehow lose money?" Under the old whole-of-income system that fear was rational — one extra dollar could re-rate your entire income and cost hundreds. The marginal system that started 1 July 2025 removed that mechanic completely: only the extra dollars are charged, at 15 or 17 cents each. A raise can shrink in your hands, but it can never turn negative because of HECS.
| Income before | Income after | HECS before | HECS after | Extra HECS | Share of the raise |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $65,000 | $70,000 | $0 | $71 | $71 | 1.4% |
| $75,000 | $80,000 | $821 | $1,571 | $750 | 15.0% |
| $90,000 | $95,000 | $3,071 | $3,821 | $750 | 15.0% |
| $110,000 | $115,000 | $6,071 | $6,821 | $750 | 15.0% |
| $125,000 | $130,000 | $8,321 | $9,076 | $755 | 15.1% |
| $140,000 | $145,000 | $10,776 | $11,626 | $850 | 17.0% |
| $160,000 | $165,000 | $14,176 | $15,026 | $850 | 17.0% |
| $180,000 | $185,000 | $17,576 | $18,426 | $850 | 17.0% |
| $200,000 | $205,000 | $20,000 | $20,500 | $500 | 10.0% |
Extra 2026-27 compulsory repayment caused by a $5,000 raise, by starting income. No packaging or other add-backs.
Three regions, three flat answers: in the 15% band a $5,000 raise costs $750 of extra HECS; in the 17% band, $850; above the whole-of-income switch, $500. The only in-between rows are raises that straddle a boundary, and they land between the two rates — never above them.
Look at the jump from $185,000 to $190,000: the extra HECS is $574 — about 11.5% of the raise, less than the 17.0% charged in the 17% band below it. That's not an error. From $186,051 the system stops being marginal and charges a flat 10% of total income, and 10% is a lower rate than the 17 cents the marginal band was charging on each extra dollar. The boundary itself costs 49 cents to cross — we checked every dollar around it here.
After a raise, payroll re-estimates your withholding from your new fortnightly pay, as if you'd earned at that rate all year. Your actual repayment is annual: part-year at the old salary, part-year at the new one. So in the year of the raise, withholding typically overshoots slightly and the difference comes back at assessment — the same reconciliation described in why is my HECS not being deducted?.
Also remember the charge is on repayment income, not salary alone: if the raise arrives as extra super or packaged benefits instead of cash, it can still raise your HECS — the add-backs are itemised here.
The only rows in the table that aren't a flat 15, 17 or 10 cents are raises that cross a band edge, and they behave exactly as marginal systems should: each slice of the raise is charged at its own band's rate. Take $68,000 to $73,000 — a raise that starts below the threshold. The first $1,528 (up to the $69,528 threshold) attracts nothing; only the remaining $3,472 is charged at 15 cents, for $521 of extra HECS on the full $5,000. The blended rate is 10.4% — less than the 15% band rate, because part of the raise landed in the nil zone.
The same logic caps every other crossing: a raise across the 15%/17% edge at $129,717 blends between 15 and 17 cents, and a raise across the $186,051 switchover blends down towards 10 cents, as shown above. There is no input you can enter where a $1 raise costs more than $1 — if a calculator ever shows you one, it's running the abolished system (test it).
A bonus is just income that arrives all at once, and the annual formula treats it that way: a $90,000 salary plus a $10,000 bonus is assessed identically to a flat $100,000 — $4,571 for the year, $1,500 of which is attributable to the bonus.
What feels different is the payslip. Withholding on a bonus is calculated at the marginal rates implied by that fortnight's inflated pay, so the deduction on the bonus fortnight looks brutal — and then the annual reconciliation quietly hands back anything over-collected, the mechanism described in the refund guide. Judge a bonus by the annual table, never by the fortnight it landed in.
To see your own before/after: run both incomes through the repayment calculator and subtract — that difference, not the payslip spike, is what the raise or bonus actually costs in HECS.
Every figure on this page is computed at build time by the same engine that powers the calculators on this site — nothing is typed in by hand, so the tables cannot drift away from the tools. The engine is checked against the ATO's published thresholds by a golden test suite that fails the build if any figure moves unexpectedly.
Is there a HECS cliff at $186,051? We checked every dollar
HECS repayment at every income — the full 2026-27 table