Medicare levy calculator 2025–26

Work out your Medicare levy for 2025–26

Enter your taxable income for the 2025–26 financial year. This is the 2% Medicare levy that most Australian residents pay, not the Medicare Levy Surcharge, which is a separate charge on higher earners without hospital cover. Everything is worked out in your browser from the Australian Taxation Office thresholds set out below, and nothing is sent anywhere. Every rate the calculator uses appears in a table further down the page, so the result can be checked by hand.

What does the 2% cost in dollars?

Above the upper threshold there is no arithmetic left to do: the levy is a flat 2% of taxable income, with no tax-free step of its own. This table converts the rate into money for the 2025–26 financial year, on the ATO rate checked 18 September 2026.

The fortnightly column is there because the levy is collected through PAYG withholding across the year rather than billed at the end of it, so the amount that actually leaves your pay is the one on the right.

Will private health insurance change this number?

No, and this is the most common reason people end up with the wrong figure. Search for a Medicare levy calculator and most of what comes back is a Medicare Levy Surcharge calculator: on 18 September 2026, five of the first nine results on google.com.au were surcharge tools published by health funds and comparison sites. They answer a different question.

Figures checked against the ATO on 18 September 2026. The ATO’s own wording is that if you take out an appropriate level of private patient hospital cover for yourself, your spouse and all your dependants, you will not pay the surcharge. It says nothing of the kind about the levy, because cover has never reduced it.

So a person on A$130,000 with hospital cover still pays the full A$2,600 of Medicare levy. What the cover removed was the surcharge. If that is the number you were looking for, the Medicare Levy Surcharge calculator works it out and compares it against the cost of a policy.

Do I use my salary or my taxable income?

Taxable income, which is usually the smaller of the two. The ATO’s wording is that the levy is 2% of your taxable income, not of your salary, your gross pay or the figure on your employment contract.

The gap between them is your deductions. Someone on a A$95,000 salary with A$5,000 of deductions has a taxable income of A$90,000 and pays A$1,800, not A$1,900. Entering the salary instead would overstate the levy by A$100.

Salary sacrifice moves the figure the same way, and this is where the levy and the surcharge part company. Amounts you salary sacrifice into superannuation are not part of taxable income, so they reduce the Medicare levy. For the Medicare Levy Surcharge they are added back: income for MLS purposes includes reportable employer superannuation contributions. The same A$10,000 sacrificed therefore lowers one charge and not the other. Neither of those is a recommendation about what to do with your pay, and people in this position typically check the effect on both charges before deciding anything.

Enter the taxable income from your notice of assessment if you have one for 2025–26. If you do not, your best estimate of income less deductions is closer than your salary.

Which thresholds does the calculator use?

The 2025–26 figures, because they are the most recent set the ATO has published. All four household types are below, checked against the ATO on 18 September 2026. The child increases apply to the family rows only.

So a family with two dependent children is tested against A$55,914 and A$69,893 rather than A$47,238 and A$59,047. A family entitled to SAPTO with one child is tested against A$65,961 and A$82,451.

As at 18 September 2026 the ATO had not published 2026–27 low-income thresholds. That is normal rather than an oversight: they are usually set after a Budget and applied from 1 July of the year they cover, so the published figure can lag the financial year by months. The 2% rate itself is unchanged, and the Medicare Levy Surcharge thresholds are a separate set that were published well before this date.

How is the levy reduced between the two thresholds?

At 10 cents for every dollar above the lower threshold, until that amount catches up with the full 2%. The ATO publishes the two thresholds but not the rate between them, which is why most explanations stop at “you pay part of it”.

The rate is provable from the ATO’s own figures, and it holds for every household type in the table above:

The last two columns meet at the upper threshold in all four cases, which is exactly why the upper threshold sits where it does. Applied to a single in 2025–26, the reduction range looks like this.

You do not claim any of this. The ATO applies the reduction when it assesses the return.

What happens if you were exempt for part of the year?

The levy is charged for the days you were not exempt. Question M1 of the Australian tax return has two day fields, “Full 2% levy exemption, number of days” and “Half 2% levy exemption, number of days”, and the ATO’s instructions for the 2026 return say a person exempt for the whole year enters 365.

The calculator treats a full exemption day as removing one day of levy and a half exemption day as removing half a day, out of 365. On a taxable income of A$90,000, where the full levy is A$1,800, that produces these results.

Be clear about what is derived here. The ATO publishes the fields and the 365 rule, and it works the result out when you lodge, but it does not publish this apportionment arithmetic on its Medicare levy pages. The method above follows from the fields being counted in days out of 365 and reproduces the ATO’s stated outcome at 365 days. Which days you can actually claim is a separate question, answered on the Medicare levy exemption guide.

How does the family test change the answer?

It adds a second test, and the more favourable of the two applies. Your own taxable income is tested against the single thresholds. Your combined family taxable income, which the ATO’s worksheet defines as your taxable income plus your spouse’s, is tested against the family thresholds.

That is why a person on A$34,000 with a spouse on A$8,000 is in a different position from a single person on A$34,000. Family taxable income is A$42,000, under the A$47,238 family lower threshold for 2025–26, so no levy is payable at all. The single test on its own would have produced A$598.90.

One limit worth stating plainly. Where family income falls between the two family thresholds, the ATO does not publish on its Medicare levy pages how the reduced amount is divided between two spouses. The calculator therefore shows the combined figure for the couple in that range and says so on screen, rather than inventing a split. Where family income is above the upper family threshold, the family test does nothing and each spouse pays 2% of their own taxable income.

What were the 2024–25 thresholds?

Lower, in every row. These come from the ATO’s M1 instructions for the 2025 tax return, checked 18 September 2026, and are here because an amendment or a late lodgement is worked out on the year’s own figures, not this year’s.

The single threshold at which the full 2% begins moved from A$34,027 to A$35,013, a rise of A$986. The per-child increase to the family upper threshold moved from A$5,270 to A$5,423. A single on A$34,500 paid the full A$690 in 2024–25 and sits inside the reduction range in 2025–26, paying A$648.90 instead.

What does the calculator not know?

Six things, and each one can move the final assessment.

• Whether you are actually eligible for SAPTO. It applies the higher thresholds if you tick the box, and does not test your eligibility.
• Whether your exemption claim stands up. It counts the days you enter. The evidence, such as a Medicare Entitlement Statement, is a separate question.
• How a part-year family reduction is split between spouses. The ATO does not publish that step, so the calculator reports the combined figure.
• The Medicare Levy Surcharge. That is a different charge on a different income measure, worked out on the surcharge calculator.
• Your dependent children’s own income. A child only counts as a dependent child if their adjusted taxable income is under the ATO’s limits, which for 2025–26 are A$1,786 for the first child and A$1,410 for each additional child maintained for the whole year.
• Superannuation. Salary sacrificed contributions are outside taxable income and so reduce the levy, but reportable employer contributions are added back for the surcharge. The calculator takes the taxable income you give it and does not model either.
• Anything else in your return that changes taxable income after you type a figure in.

This page is general information about Australian tax rules, not personal advice, and it does not take your own circumstances into account.

How do I check the maths against the ATO?

Every step is reproducible by hand, which is the point of publishing the method rather than only the answer.

1. Find your two thresholds in the 2025–26 table above, adding A$4,338 and A$5,423 for each dependent child if the family test applies to you.
2. If your income is at or below the lower threshold, the levy is nil. If it is above the upper threshold, the levy is 2% of taxable income.
3. If it sits between them, multiply the amount above the lower threshold by 10%.
4. Multiply the result by the chargeable days divided by 365, where chargeable days are 365 less your full exemption days and half your half exemption days.

The ATO publishes its own Medicare levy calculator, which covers the 2013–14 to 2025–26 income years and, by its own page, takes between 2 and 10 minutes to complete. It is the authority and it is worth the ten minutes on a complicated year. This page exists because the same answer should also be available in one screen, with the thresholds it used printed underneath it.

The thresholds this page uses are published by the ATO and were checked on 18 September 2026. If our figure and the ATO’s disagree, the ATO’s is the one that counts. Tell us and we will correct this page and record it in the changelog above.