Casual Tax Calculator

A casual employee is someone with no firm advance commitment to ongoing work who is paid a casual loading or a specific casual rate under an award, agreement or contract. The loading is the price of that flexibility: under most awards it is an extra 25% of the minimum hourly rate, per the Fair Work Ombudsman's casual employment guidance. A $30 permanent rate becomes $37.50 casual.

The exact percentage lives in your award or enterprise agreement rather than in legislation, so 25% is the default in the calculator above, not a universal rule. Some agreements pay a flat casual rate with the loading already baked in. If you only know that loaded figure and want it converted straight into a weekly, monthly or annual salary, the hourly rate calculator does exactly that with no loading maths, and the hourly to salary calculator shows the annual figure with and without the loading side by side. The casual rate each award actually publishes, classification by classification, is set out in the award pay rates tables.

Your award decides whether the loading sits on top of a penalty rate, and the answer moves a Sunday shift by several dollars an hour. The Fair Work Ombudsman lists three ways an award can price a casual's penalty hours. When the award is silent, the default is the first: the casual loading and the penalty rate are both calculated on the minimum pay rate and paid at the same time.

Only one penalty applies at a time. Penalties are not cumulative, so a casual on hours that attract two penalty rates or shift allowances is usually paid the highest one, not both. Overtime works the same way under many awards, and the overtime pay calculator prices those hours.

Here is each method on a Retail level 1 base of $27.81 an hour (1 July 2026), using the 150% Sunday rate a permanent Retail employee gets:

Method 3 pays $3.47 an hour more than method 1 because the penalty is also charged on the loading. The Retail Award itself settles the question with all-in percentages. Casuals who are not shiftworkers get 150% of the minimum hourly rate on Saturdays and after 6pm Monday to Friday, 175% on Sundays and 250% on public holidays, and each figure already includes the casual loading. A Retail level 1 casual therefore earns $48.67 an hour on a Sunday, the method 1 figure. Adding another 25% on top would overstate it. Casual shiftworkers under the same award have their own table: 200% on a Sunday, or $55.62 at level 1.

These percentages are Retail Award figures only. Other awards set different rates and some choose method 2 or 3, so check yours in the Fair Work Pay and Conditions Tool. Once you have your loaded rate, the hourly to salary calculator turns it into a weekly and annual figure, and the calculator above works out the tax.

Under the Fair Work Act definition in force since 26 August 2024, you are a casual if, when you start, there is no firm advance commitment to ongoing work and you are entitled to a casual loading or a specific casual pay rate under an award, registered agreement or contract. Whether that commitment exists is judged on the practical reality of the job, weighing factors including whether:

• the employer can offer or not offer work, and whether that is happening
• you can accept or reject work, and whether that is happening
• future work of the kind you do is reasonably likely, given the nature of the business
• full-time or part-time staff do the same kind of work
• you have a regular pattern of work

No single factor decides it, and a regular roster on its own does not make you permanent. Under the National Employment Standards a casual gets a pathway to permanent employment, 2 days of unpaid carer's leave and 2 days of unpaid compassionate leave per occasion, 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave a year and unpaid community service leave. After at least 12 months of regular and systematic work, with a reasonable expectation it will continue, a casual can also take unpaid parental leave and request flexible working arrangements. Casuals do not get most types of paid leave, notice of termination or redundancy pay, even after years of regular shifts, although some states and territories give long-serving casuals long service leave.

The casual label cannot be used to strip entitlements. It is illegal for an employer to knowingly make a false statement to move a full-time or part-time employee onto a casual contract for the same or mostly the same work, or to dismiss or threaten to dismiss someone in order to re-engage them as a casual for that work. Courts can impose penalties on businesses and on individuals. If that sounds like your job, the Fair Work Infoline is 13 13 94.

The ATO does not care that you are casual. Your loaded earnings are ordinary income, withheld and taxed on the same 2026-27 tax brackets as any permanent salary, Medicare levy included. What makes casual tax feel odd is variable hours: a big week is withheld as if every week were that big, then the excess comes back at your return.

Casuals paid weekly can check their payslip against the weekly tax table, which lists the 2026-27 schedule amounts on both the threshold and no-threshold scales. A casual payslip has to show the casual loading as its own line rather than folded into the hourly rate, and the payslip generator keeps it separate. And because casual work so often runs alongside another job, remember the threshold can only be claimed once; the second job tax calculator shows what the no-threshold scale does to a side gig.