HECS-HELP · 2026-27 thresholds
Your HECS repayment, and the year it finally clears
The compulsory repayment for this year, then the honest version of the payoff: indexation lands on 1 June, and the money your employer has been withholding all year is not credited until your return is assessed months later. Most calculators do it the other way round.
Rates verified against the official sources — how we check.
Compulsory repayment this year
$3,070.80
3.4% of your repayment income, withheld from your pay and credited when your 2027 tax return is assessed.
Debt today $30,000Indexation still to come $5,026.04
Debt clear after
2035-36
10 more annual cycles, in which you pay $35,026.04 to clear a $30,000 debt.
How the repayment is worked out
What happens to the balance this year
Indexation adds $840 before a cent of this year’s repayment reaches the loan.
An estimate of your compulsory repayment and how long the balance takes to clear. Future indexation rates and future repayment thresholds are not published in advance, so the years beyond this one depend on the assumptions above. General information only — not financial or tax advice.
Your loan, year by year
Each row is one full cycle, in the order the ATO actually runs it. Indexation is applied on 1 June to the balance that has been unpaid for more than 11 months. Only then, once your return has been lodged and assessed, is the year’s compulsory repayment credited.
| Income year | Opening balance | Indexation added | Repayment credited | Balance after |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-27 | $30,000 | +$840 | −$3,070.80 | $27,769.20 |
| 2027-28 | $27,769.20 | +$777.54 | −$3,162.90 | $25,383.84 |
| 2028-29 | $25,383.84 | +$710.75 | −$3,257.85 | $22,836.74 |
| 2029-30 | $22,836.74 | +$639.43 | −$3,355.56 | $20,120.61 |
| 2030-31 | $20,120.61 | +$563.38 | −$3,456.27 | $17,227.72 |
| 2031-32 | $17,227.72 | +$482.38 | −$3,559.90 | $14,150.20 |
| 2032-33 | $14,150.20 | +$396.21 | −$3,666.70 | $10,879.71 |
| 2033-34 | $10,879.71 | +$304.63 | −$3,776.65 | $7,407.69 |
| 2034-35 | $7,407.69 | +$207.42 | −$3,890 | $3,725.11 |
| 2035-36 | $3,725.11 | +$104.30 | −$3,829.41 | $0 |
The repayment column combines the compulsory repayment with any voluntary payment.
What indexation costs you over the life of the debt
The solid line is your balance as it really behaves. The dashed line is the same debt with the same repayments and no indexation at all. The gap between them is what indexation adds before you finish.
Enter your details above to see this.
Both lines use the repayments in the table above. The chart repeats data already in that table, so nothing here is available only as a picture.
Why your balance does not move on payday
If your employer knows you have a study loan, they withhold an extra amount from every pay. It is natural to assume that amount is going onto the loan as it comes out. It is not. The ATO holds it as tax withheld, along with the rest of your PAYG, and it only touches the loan when you lodge your return and a compulsory repayment appears on your notice of assessment. The ATO puts it plainly: your loan balance does not reduce after each pay cycle, it is applied as a lump sum after your income tax return is lodged.
On a payslip that withheld amount is often, but not always, broken out as a line marked STSL. If you are looking for it and cannot find it, what STSL means on a payslip covers why it may not appear at all, and why a second job can have it withheld when your main job does not.
That single fact is why the order in the table above matters. Indexation is applied on 1 June, near the end of the income year, to a balance that still contains every dollar withheld since the previous July. A calculator that subtracts your repayments first and indexes what is left will tell you the debt clears sooner than it does, and the error compounds every year it runs.
It also explains the thing people notice in myGov and assume is a mistake: a balance that sits still for ten months, jumps up on 1 June, and only then drops. Nothing has gone wrong. That is the sequence working as designed. If you have not looked at the balance in a while, the guide to checking your HECS debt covers where it lives and what each line on the account means.
The 1 June question
Indexation is applied to the part of your loan that has been unpaid for more than 11 months, and it is applied on 1 June. A voluntary repayment that reaches the ATO before that date reduces the balance being indexed; one made on 2 June does not, for another year.
The ATO’s own guidance is to allow time for the payment to be received and processed: electronic payments and payments made at Australia Post can take up to four business days to appear, and a mailed cheque takes longer still. If you want a payment counted for a given year, the last week of May is already late.
Two things that are not true, and cost people money. There is no bonus for paying early — that was removed on 1 January 2017, and a dollar paid voluntarily now reduces the balance by exactly a dollar. And a voluntary repayment does not replace your compulsory one: if you still have a loan and your income is above the threshold, the compulsory repayment still appears on your assessment. The only exception is paying the loan off entirely, which is why the ATO suggests doing that before you lodge.
Salary sacrificing does not shrink this
Your repayment is worked out on repayment income, not taxable income. The ATO builds it by adding to your taxable income all of the following: reportable fringe benefits, total net investment loss, reportable super contributions, and exempt foreign employment income.
Read that list again with a payslip in mind. Salary sacrificed super is a reportable super contribution. A novated lease is a reportable fringe benefit. A negatively geared investment property is a net investment loss. Each of them lowers your taxable income and each of them is added straight back before your study loan repayment is worked out. Arrangements sold as a way to reduce what comes out of your pay reduce your income tax and leave this untouched.
The field for it is on the calculator above, so you can see the size of the effect on your own numbers rather than take our word for it.
What changed on 1 July 2025
Until 30 June 2025, a single percentage was applied to your whole repayment income. Crossing a threshold by one dollar could raise the rate on every dollar you earned, so a small pay rise occasionally left you worse off. From the 2025-26 income year the system is marginal: the rate applies only to the income above the threshold, in the same way the income tax brackets work.
| What you repay | 2025-26 repayment income | 2026-27 repayment income |
|---|---|---|
| Nil | Up to $67,000 | Up to $69,528 |
| 15c in each dollar above the threshold | $67,001 to $125,000 | $69,529 to $129,717 |
| A fixed base plus 17c in each dollar above the second threshold | $125,001 to $179,285, base $8,700 | $129,718 to $186,050, base $9,028 |
| 10% of the whole repayment income | $179,286 and over | $186,051 and over |
Both years use the same shape, so the difference between them is the indexation of the thresholds. The same income repays less this year than it did last year:
| Repayment income | 2025-26 | 2026-27 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| $70,000 | $450 | $70.80 | −$379.20 |
| $90,000 | $3,450 | $3,070.80 | −$379.20 |
| $110,000 | $6,450 | $6,070.80 | −$379.20 |
| $130,000 | $9,550 | $9,076.11 | −$473.89 |
| $160,000 | $14,650 | $14,176.11 | −$473.89 |
Both scales are the ATO’s published tables for those years. The comparison holds income constant to isolate the threshold change; in practice your income moved too.
Every indexation rate the ATO has applied
Indexation is the lower of the Consumer Price Index and the Wage Price Index. It was CPI alone until the Universities Accord (Student Support and Other Measures) Act 2024 changed it, and that change was backdated: the 2023 and 2024 rates were restated downwards after they had already been applied, which is why two rows below show two figures.
| Applied 1 June | Indexation rate | Originally applied |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 2.8% | — |
| 2025 | 3.2% | — |
| 2024 | 4.0% | 4.7% |
| 2023 | 3.2% | 7.1% |
| 2022 | 3.9% | — |
| 2021 | 0.6% | — |
| 2020 | 1.8% | — |
| 2019 | 1.8% | — |
| 2018 | 1.9% | — |
| 2017 | 1.5% | — |
| 2016 | 1.5% | — |
| 2015 | 2.1% | — |
| 2014 | 2.6% | — |
| 2013 | 2.0% | — |
Source: From 2025 the ATO calculates the figure after the December CPI and WPI are released, from ABS figures collected over the previous 2 years. The rate applied on 1 June 2027 is expected to be published around April or May 2027.
Frequently asked questions
How much is my HECS repayment on $90,000?
Why has my HECS balance not gone down even though it comes out of my pay?
Should I make a voluntary repayment before 1 June?
What happens if I never earn above the threshold?
Is there still a discount for paying my HECS debt off early?
What counts as a study loan for this?
Will my employer stop taking HECS out once the debt is paid?
What does this calculator not model?
Where these numbers come from
The repayment scale, the indexation rates and the crediting rules on this page are all read from a dated data file that cites the ATO page each figure came from, and the engine is pinned by automated tests to all three of the ATO’s published worked examples for 2026-27. A rate cannot be changed here without its test being changed with it.
- ATO — Study and training loan indexation rates — ATO page last updated 2026-04-17.
- ATO — Compulsory repayments — ATO page last updated 2026-06-03.
- ATO — Voluntary repayments — ATO page last updated 2025-11-06.
- ATO — Study and training loan repayment thresholds and rates — ATO page last updated 2026-06-30.
- ATO — View your study loan account online — ATO page last updated 2026-06-03.
- ATO — Study and training support loans weekly tax table — ATO page last updated 2026-06-17.
The methodology page sets out what every calculator on this site models and what it deliberately does not. If your pay is the question rather than the loan, the pay calculator puts this repayment alongside your income tax, the Medicare levy and super.