What your payslip says

Gross at the top, net at the bottom

Two numbers do most of the work on a payslip. Gross pay is what you earned for the pay period before anything is taken out of it. Net pay is what arrives in your bank account. Everything printed between the two is either an amount added to your gross or an amount subtracted from it.

Payslips differ in whether gross pay appears as a single figure or is broken into parts. Ordinary hours appear at your ordinary rate. Overtime, penalty rates, shift loadings, allowances, bonuses and commissions each carry their own line, separate from the ordinary hourly rate. The Fair Work Ombudsman sets out what a payslip has to itemise (fairwork.gov.au, "Pay slips", checked 18 August 2026). If you are paid a salary rather than an hourly rate, your annual rate of pay is one of the required items.

The pay period is printed as a start and end date, with the payment date shown separately. Those are not always in the same week: the pay period covers the work, the payment date is when the money moved.

The amount withheld before you see it

Tax appears as PAYG withholding, PAYG tax, or as "tax". PAYG stands for pay as you go.

Your employer works out an amount from your gross pay using the withholding schedules the ATO publishes, then sends that amount to the ATO under your tax file number rather than to you (ato.gov.au, "PAYG withholding", checked 18 August 2026). The figure on your payslip is that withheld amount for this pay period alone.

What is withheld across a year is not the same thing as the tax owed for that year. Withheld amounts are worked out pay by pay, from each pay on its own; the final figure is calculated when your tax return is assessed, across your whole year's income. If more was withheld than the assessment arrives at, the difference is refunded. If less, the difference is payable.

Other subtractions sit in the same part of the payslip, each one named and carrying its own amount. Depending on your arrangements you might see union or professional association fees, a novated lease deduction, salary packaging amounts, child support deductions, or repayments of a study or training support loan.

Superannuation sits next to your pay

Superannuation appears on your payslip, but it is not part of your net pay and does not pass through your bank account. It is an amount your employer pays to a super fund on your behalf.

The compulsory part is the super guarantee. It is a percentage of your ordinary time earnings, set in legislation, and the ATO publishes the rate that applies (ato.gov.au, "Super guarantee", checked 18 August 2026). That percentage has been changed a number of times since the scheme began, which is why an old payslip and a recent one can show different proportions against similar earnings. Ordinary time earnings is a defined term rather than a plain-English one. Broadly it covers what you are paid for your ordinary hours, and the ATO publishes a list of the payments that fall inside it.

A payslip has to show the amount of super contributed, or to be contributed, for the period, and the name, or name and number, of the fund it goes to (fairwork.gov.au, "Pay slips", checked 18 August 2026).

The timing of the payment has changed. From 1 July 2026, employers pay super guarantee contributions on each payday rather than quarterly, and the contribution has to reach the fund within 7 business days of payday, with some exceptions such as new employees (ato.gov.au, "About Payday Super", checked 18 August 2026). This is why the amount on a payslip and the balance showing in a fund account can be out of step for a while. The payslip records the obligation. The fund records the arrival.

Salary sacrifice, where an arrangement exists

Not every payslip has this. Where it does, it changes how the earnings lines read.

A salary sacrifice arrangement is an agreement between you and your employer in which you permanently give up part of a future entitlement to salary or wages, and receive a benefit of similar cost to the employer instead. The ATO's conditions for the arrangement to be effective are that it is entered into before the work is performed and that you cannot access the sacrificed salary (ato.gov.au, "Salary sacrificing for employees", checked 18 August 2026).

Arrangements take more than one shape. One directs an amount into your super fund, on top of the super guarantee. Another pays for something else, such as a car under a novated lease or, in some not-for-profit and hospital employment, a range of everyday expenses.

Some payroll systems print a full gross and then a separate sacrifice deduction line; others print a reduced gross. Where an arrangement meets the ATO's conditions, the sacrificed amount is reported by the employer under the salary sacrifice rules rather than as salary or wages, and the ATO sets out how each kind of sacrificed amount is reported and how sacrificed super is treated once it reaches the fund (ato.gov.au, "Salary sacrificing for employees", checked 18 August 2026). Sacrificed super appears on a line of its own, separate from the super guarantee, because the two are reported separately.

Leave balances, and the line that is not there

Payslips differ in whether they show leave. Where a leave block appears, it carries hours or days for each type: annual leave, personal or carer's leave, and long service leave where you have qualified. Some show the balance at the end of the pay period, some also show what accrued during it, and some show leave taken.

Where leave accrues progressively through the year on the basis of hours worked, the balance moves by a small amount each pay rather than changing once at an anniversary. Awards, agreements and leave types differ in how accrual is worked out.

Leave balances are not a required payslip item. The Fair Work Ombudsman describes showing them as something employers may do rather than something required, so a payslip with no leave block is not necessarily missing anything it had to carry (fairwork.gov.au, "Pay slips", checked 18 August 2026).

One entitlement is handled the other way around. Paid family and domestic violence leave must not be mentioned on a payslip, neither the leave taken nor the balance (fairwork.gov.au, "Pay slips", checked 18 August 2026). Where that leave is paid, it appears on the payslip as ordinary hours.

Year-to-date, and where the same numbers end up

Alongside the lines on some payslips is a second column headed YTD. It is the running total of that line since the start of the financial year, which in Australia runs 1 July to 30 June. Where that column is used, gross, tax and super each carry one. At the first pay after 1 July those columns start again from zero, which is why an early-July payslip carries small numbers there.

The same figures travel to the ATO. Under Single Touch Payroll, employers report pay, withholding and super information each time they run a pay. What used to arrive as a paper payment summary after the end of the year is now an income statement inside ATO online services through myGov (ato.gov.au, "Access your income statement", checked 18 August 2026).

After the end of the financial year an employer finalises the year's reporting, and the income statement is then marked "Tax ready". Until it carries that label, the amounts in it can still change.

A payslip and an income statement describe the same money at different resolutions. One pay period, and one financial year.

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