In New Zealand, if your gross annual salary is $74,776, or $6,231 per month, the total amount of taxes and contributions that will be deducted from your salary is $16,688.
This means that your net income, or salary after tax, will be $58,088 per year, $4,841 per month, or $1,117 per week.
It goes without saying that taxes are nuanced — depending on personal circumstances, what you owe can drastically change. In order to make our take-home pay calculator easy to use, we had to simplify tax situations by assuming you're unmarried and have no dependents. That means what you really owe in taxes may be higher or lower once all circumstances and deductions are accounted for.
To figure out your take-home pay, or net salary, you need to subtract your taxes and deductions from your gross income, which is your income before all expenses. If you're a full-time employee in New Zealand, this is generally done for you by your employer, who automatically deducts taxes from your paycheck.
However, if you're self-employed, you must file an IR3 individual tax return to claim your income and expenses. To give you a clearer idea of how much of your salary will go toward taxes, we'll break down the relevant expenses in our next section. To get a quick after-tax estimate, run your gross salary through our take-home pay calculator.
A "good" pay in New Zealand is one that affords a comfortable lifestyle, but depending on where you live, what it takes to be comfortable can vary quite a bit. You can find a full breakdown of average salaries in the What is the Average Salary in New Zealand section. There, we report that most New Zealanders earn a salary of around $61,828 yearly before tax, which comes out to $49,357 annually, or $4,113 a month, after taxes.
To determine if you can afford to live in a certain region of New Zealand, you can consult our table below to see what most people earn in each region. As a rule of thumb, if your salary falls at or above these averages, then it's probably enough to afford living in the region. The more your salary exceeds the average, the more comfortable you can expect to be.
| Region | Average Annual Salary | Median Annual Salary |
|---|---|---|
| Northland | $73,580 | $65,624 |
| Auckland | $85,228 | $70,512 |
| Waikato | $74,568 | $66,092 |
| Bay of Plenty | $76,908 | $67,860 |
| Gisborne | $72,592 | $64,844 |
| Hawke's Bay | $72,592 | $64,844 |
| Taranaki | $75,140 | $66,820 |
| Manawatū-Whanganui | $71,604 | $63,752 |
| Wellington | $89,232 | $74,776 |
| Nelson | $71,136 | $65,104 |
| Tasman | $71,136 | $65,104 |
| Marlborough | $71,136 | $65,104 |
| West Coast | $71,136 | $65,104 |
| Canterbury | $75,764 | $67,964 |
| Otago | $75,712 | $65,000 |
| Southland | $69,420 | $62,400 |
To get an idea of what most New Zealanders earn, the median salary is generally more representative than the average (which tends to skew toward high outlier salaries). That said, according to the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS) survey for June 2022, the median weekly pay for New Zealand residents was $1,189. Before tax, that's an annual salary of $61,828. After tax, that works out to a yearly take-home salary of $49,357 or a monthly take-home pay of $4,113, according to our New Zealand salary calculator.
This number is quite a bit higher if we look at the average weekly salary, coming out to $1,438. According to our calculator, that's a yearly take-home salary of $58,088 and a monthly take-home salary of $4,841.
The national minimum wage in New Zealand is $21.20 for employees over the age of 16 who are not in training. This translates to a monthly salary of $3,675 for those working a standard 40-hour week. The rate differs depending on the employee's status and age and is reviewed and set by the government annually.
According to the government's official Employment New Zealand website, the rates for the 2022 tax year are as follows:
- Adult Minimum Wage: $21.20 an hour. Applies to all employees over the age of 16 who aren't training or starting out, or who are involved in supervisory or training roles, such as overseeing or instructing coworkers.
- Starting-Out Minimum Wage: $16.96 an hour. Applies to all employees who are 16 or 17 and have worked for their current employer for fewer than six consecutive months; or all employees who are 18 or 19, have been paid social security benefits for at least six months, but have worked for fewer than six months continuously.
- Training Minimum Wage: $16.96 an hour. Applies to all employees 20 or older who are working to fulfill education credits within an industry training program — not for non-student employees who are simply in the training period of their jobs.
Our New Zealand salary calculator accounts for all of the major expenses and contributions you can expect to make on tax day. We mentioned earlier that full-time employee wages are taxed at the time of payment — this is called "tax at source", and it's a crucial part of New Zealand's pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) scheme. Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) levies and the Independent Earner Tax Credit (IETC) are applied at source as well. This NZ salary calculator accounts for all three:
- Income Tax: Pay in New Zealand is taxed at a progressive rate, starting at 10.5% for incomes under $14,000 and capping at 39% for incomes over $180,000.
- Accident Compensation Corporation: ACC levies are a form of insurance that entitles you to healthcare and rehabilitation if you're hurt outside of work.
- Independent Earner Tax Credit: The IETC provides up to $520 of tax credits for individuals who are New Zealand tax residents earning between $24,000 and $48,000.
For in-depth information about the tax system, visit our Tax Calculator for New Zealand.
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