Gross pay is what you earned before tax. Net pay is what reaches your bank account. On a working holiday visa with a TFN on file, about 15% of gross sits between the two. Superannuation is not part of that gap: it is paid on top of your wages, into a fund, not deducted from them.
What do the numbers on your payslip actually mean?
An Australian payslip separates four figures, and confusing any two of them is how people conclude they have been underpaid when they have not.
- Gross pay: total earnings before anything is taken out
- Tax withheld: PAYG sent to the ATO in your name
- Net pay: gross minus tax withheld, the amount transferred to you
- Super: a separate line, paid by the employer into your fund
On $1,000 of gross wages at a registered working holiday maker employer, $150 is withheld at 15%, $850 lands in your account, and $120 of super at 12% goes to your fund. The super never appears in the $850 and never should.
Why is superannuation not a deduction?
Superannuation is an employer cost on top of your wage, not a slice of it. It is calculated on your gross ordinary earnings at 12% and paid into a fund in your name, and your gross pay is the same whether the employer pays it or not. This is the most common misreading of an Australian payslip we see.
If a payslip shows super subtracted from gross to arrive at a lower gross, that is not a presentation quirk. It means a payroll error, or an employer treating a wage as though it already included super, which changes what you are owed. Our guide on unpaid super covers what to do about it.
Which figure does your tax return use?
Your tax return and income statement both use gross pay, never net. The ATO calculates your liability on gross earnings, then credits the tax already withheld, and the difference either way is your refund or your bill. Net pay appears nowhere in the calculation.
This catches people tracking their year in a banking app. The figure reaching your account is roughly 85% of the number the ATO will use, so the year always looks smaller from the bank side.
What decides how much of your gross you actually keep?
Three facts about your year decide the gap. The withholding rate is the biggest: 15% with a TFN on file at a registered working holiday maker employer, 45% without one, and foreign resident rates if the employer never registered as a WHM employer. Each produces a very different net figure on the same gross.
- Whether your TFN was on file from day one. Weeks at 45% before the declaration form was processed show up as much thinner net pay, and the excess comes back at tax time rather than in the pay run.
- Whether the employer is ATO registered to employ working holiday makers. An unregistered employer withholds at foreign resident rates, higher than 15% from the first dollar.
- Whether penalties, loading and allowances were paid at all. A casual rate that quietly omits the 25% loading lowers gross before withholding enters the picture, and that loss does not come back in a refund.
How can you check the gross figure is right?
Rebuilding gross from first principles takes about five minutes, and it is worth doing once per employer while you still remember the shifts.
- Ordinary hours multiplied by your hourly rate
- Plus penalty rates for weekend, evening and public holiday shifts
- Plus allowances such as uniform, tool or travel
- Plus overtime at the correct rate
- Compare the total against the gross line on the payslip
Where the numbers do not reconcile, the cause is usually a classification one level too low under the award rather than deliberate theft. Raise it in writing with payroll, because that is the version employers fix quickly.
Where does this stop being a payslip question?
It stops being one the moment the gap between gross and net is caused by your tax position rather than by arithmetic. Over-withholding at 45%, an unregistered employer, a Medicare levy charged to someone not entitled to Medicare, and a residency item answered wrongly all shrink net pay during the year and are all recovered, or not, on the return.
The payslip shows the amount taken and says nothing about whether it should have been. Working out which of those applied to your year is what a tax return is for, and it is why two backpackers with identical gross pay can end up thousands apart.