Overtime Pay Calculator

Time and a half for the first few hours and double time after that is a common pattern, but it is set by your award or enterprise agreement, not by any tax rule. That is why the multipliers in this tool are editable rather than fixed. The Fair Work Ombudsman at fairwork.gov.au is the authority on what your role must be paid; this page, like the rest of our pay calculators, handles the tax side.

Casual loading is a separate thing again and stacks differently under each award. If you are casual, the casual tax calculator starts from the loaded rate. And if you just want to translate an hourly figure into annual pay without overtime, use the hourly rate calculator.

Overtime starts where your ordinary hours end, and your award or registered agreement decides where that is. Fair Work defines overtime as work performed outside the ordinary hours listed in an award or agreement, and says the details of when it applies are different under each one. The ATO lists the usual triggers: hours beyond your ordinary hours, hours outside the agreed number of hours, and hours outside the spread of ordinary hours (the times of day ordinary hours can be worked). So a shift that starts early can attract overtime even in a short week, if your award says so.

The National Employment Standards set the outer limit. An employer must not request or require a full-time employee to work more than 38 hours a week, unless the award or enterprise agreement sets different hours, or unless the additional hours are reasonable. For part-time and casual employees the limit is the lesser of 38 hours and their agreed ordinary weekly hours. Authorised leave counts towards the week, and you can refuse additional hours that are unreasonable.

Whether extra hours are reasonable turns on factors the National Employment Standards list, including:

• any risk to your health and safety
• your personal circumstances, including family responsibilities
• the needs of the workplace
• whether you are paid overtime, penalty rates or other compensation for the extra hours
• the notice your employer gave, and any notice you gave that you would refuse
• usual patterns of work in the industry, and your role and level of responsibility
• whether the hours fit an averaging arrangement

Averaging. An award or agreement can average hours over a period longer than a week, but the average still has to stay within 38 hours for a full-time employee unless the extra is reasonable. Fair Work's example is Malcolm, whose award allows 152 hours over 4 weeks. He works 21, 60, 38, 33 hours: 152 hours in total, an average of 38 a week. The pattern fits the award, yet the 60-hour week is still 22 hours over 38, and it has to be assessed for reasonableness on its own.

One trap for award-free employees: Fair Work states that under the Fair Work Act, award and agreement-free employees are not entitled to a higher rate of pay for working overtime. If that is you, the multipliers in the calculator above should be set to 1 unless your contract says otherwise.

Penalties usually do not stack. Fair Work puts it plainly: employees working at a time when a penalty rate applies usually get paid one penalty rate or shift allowance at a time, and usually the highest one that applies. That is what an award means when it says penalties are not cumulative. Fair Work's example is Kane, an afternoon shift worker on a 15% shift allowance: when he works overtime he gets the overtime rate instead of the shift allowance, not both.

Here is what that looks like in dollars on an illustrative $30 base rate, a 15% afternoon shift allowance and time and a half for 4 hours of overtime:

A payslip that shows both on the same hours is overpaying by $18.00 in this example, and a timesheet check that expects both will read a correct payslip as short.

The exception is award-specific. Some awards calculate a penalty on a rate that already includes a loading, which Fair Work calls compounding. The Graphic Arts Award pays overtime on a Saturday or Sunday at 200% of the overtime hourly rate, and defines that rate as the ordinary hourly rate plus any applicable shift allowances. Using the same illustrative figures, 200% of $30 is $60.00 an hour, while 200% of the loaded $34.50 is $69.00. Only use the compounded figure if your own award says so. Casual loading has its own interaction rules, covered on the casual pay calculator.

Some awards and registered agreements let you take paid time off instead of being paid for overtime. Fair Work calls it time off instead of overtime pay, also known as time in lieu, time off in lieu or TOIL. It is not automatic: under the award clauses below, you and your employer have to agree to it in writing.

Hour for hour, or the value of the overtime. Awards split on this. The Clerks Award gives the same number of hours off as overtime hours worked: 2 overtime hours earn 2 hours off. The General Retail Award gives time off equivalent to the overtime payment: 2 hours at 150% earn 3 hours off. Same overtime, a different amount of time off, so check the clause in your own award.

Under both of those awards the clause works the same way from there:

• the time off must be taken within 6 months of the overtime, at a time you both agree
• you can ask at any time to be paid instead, and the employer must pay it in the next pay period at the overtime rate that applied when the overtime was worked
• TOIL not taken within the 6 months is paid out at that overtime rate in the next pay period
• the employer must not pressure you into, or out of, a TOIL agreement

On termination, untaken TOIL is paid at the overtime rate. Both awards require the employer to pay any untaken time off for the overtime at the overtime rate applicable when it was worked. On a $30 base, 2 untaken hours from time-and-a-half overtime are $90, not the $60 an hour-for-hour reading at base rate would give. Add it to the rest of what you are owed with the final pay calculator.

For super, the ATO treats TOIL taken and paid at ordinary rates as ordinary time earnings, so the super guarantee applies to it. Cashing out TOIL while you are still employed is not qualifying earnings.

There is no special tax rate for overtime. It is ordinary income taxed through the same 2026-27 tax brackets as the rest of your wages. On $40 an hour with 4 hours of overtime at 1.5x each week, the overtime adds $240 gross and about $163 to weekly take-home, meaning you keep roughly 68% of it at that income.

The reason overtime feels heavily taxed is the withholding mechanics. A one-off big week is annualised by the withholding tables, as if you earned that much every week, so payday tax jumps. The overpayment washes back as a refund when you lodge. To check what a single week should have withheld, put the gross through the weekly tax calculator.

Overtime paid in your normal pay run is salary and wages. Your employer adds it to the ordinary pay for that period and withholds from the total with the ATO Schedule 1 formulas (NAT 1004), the same tables used for the rest of your pay. On $30 an hour with the tax-free threshold claimed, a 38-hour week of $1,140 has $183 withheld. Add 4 hours at time and a half ($180) and the week is $1,320 with $241 withheld, so $58 of the $180 goes to withholding that week. The fortnightly and monthly tax calculators do the same for longer pay cycles.