HELP / HECS study-loan repayments
If you have a HELP or HECS study-and-training loan, a compulsory repayment is collected through the tax system once your income passes the first threshold. Since 2025–26 the repayment is marginal — worked out only on the income above each threshold — so a pay rise no longer pushes your whole repayment up a step. This page explains how it works.
A marginal repayment, collected through tax
A HELP or HECS study-and-training loan is repaid through the tax system — there’s no separate bill and no lender to deal with. Once your income passes the first threshold ($69,528), a compulsory repayment is worked out when your tax return is assessed. Below that threshold, nothing is compulsory — though you can always make a voluntary repayment if you choose.
Since 2025–26 the system is marginal, and the difference matters. Under the old rules a single flat percentage applied to your whole income the moment you crossed a threshold, so a small pay rise could lift your entire repayment to a higher rate — a jump that occasionally left people worse off after the repayment. The marginal system fixes that: the repayment is calculated only on the income above each threshold, so crossing a threshold only ever affects the income above it. A pay rise can never leave you with less in hand after your HELP repayment.
Repayment thresholds and rates
How the compulsory repayment builds up across income bands. The top band is a flat rate on your whole repayment income (it meets the band below it exactly by design).
| Repayment income | Compulsory repayment |
|---|---|
| Up to $69,528 | Nil |
| $69,529 – $129,717 | 15% of income over $69,528 |
| $129,718 – $186,050 | $9,028 plus 17% of income over $129,717 |
| Over $186,050 | 10% of total repayment income |
Collected through PAYG, settled at assessment
You don’t pay a HELP repayment in a lump sum. When you tell your employer you have a study loan, extra tax is withheld from each pay under the PAYG (pay-as-you-go) system — spread across the year so nothing has to be found all at once. That withholding is an estimate; the actual compulsory repayment is worked out when your return is assessed, against your full income for the year. If too much was withheld you get it back; if too little, the balance is added to your assessment. The top band is a flat rate on your whole repayment income and meets the band below it exactly, so there is no cliff at the boundary — the repayment rises smoothly with income across the whole scale.
What counts as repayment income
The calculator approximates your repayment income by your taxable income. The ATO’s full definition of repayment income adds back some items — reportable fringe benefits, reportable (salary-sacrificed) super contributions and net investment losses — which aren’t modelled here, so a real assessment can differ from the estimate, usually upward for anyone with those items. Treat the figure as a guide to the size of the repayment, not a precise assessment. Turn the study-loan toggle on in the calculator to include a repayment in your take-home estimate, and off to see your pay without one.
The figures shown are taken from the ATO and cited on this page. If a rule changed recently it may not be reflected here yet, and none of them has been through our final sign-off — for an official amount, the ATO is the binding one.