HELP and STSL Repayments Explained

Compulsory repayments start once your repayment income for 2026-27 exceeds $69,528. Below that, you owe nothing for the year no matter how large your loan balance is — the debt just sits there, indexed annually. Repayment income, not salary, is the test, and it's measured across the whole financial year rather than pay by pay, so a few months of high earnings don't trigger a repayment on their own.

The threshold is indexed each year ($67,000 in 2025-26, $69,528 in 2026-27), so the starting line moves with wages. And because the system is now marginal, crossing the threshold by a little costs you a little: earn $70,000 and your repayment is 15% of the $472 above the threshold — $70.80 for the whole year — not a percentage of the whole $70,000 as under the old flat-rate design.

Since 2025-26 the calculation works like tax brackets, applied to bands of your repayment income:

• Up to $69,528: nil
• $69,529 to $129,717: 15 cents for each dollar over $69,528
• $129,718 to $186,050: $9,028 plus 17 cents for each dollar over $129,717
• Over $186,050: 10% of your total repayment income

The bands join up cleanly: 15% of the full first band ($129,717 − $69,528 = $60,189) is $9,028.35, which rounds to exactly the base amount the second band starts from, and the second band's ceiling of $18,605 matches 10% of $186,050 where the flat calculation takes over. The repayment is assessed on your tax return and applied to your loan after any indexation for that year. Nothing about the calculation depends on the size of your debt: someone owing $80,000 and someone owing $2,000 repay the same amount at the same income, though the smaller debt is capped at whatever balance remains.

Here is the full arithmetic at six incomes for 2026-27, with the weekly equivalent of each annual repayment:

Two things stand out. A $30,000 pay rise from $70,000 to $100,000 lifts your repayment by about $4,500, because every dollar of the rise sits in the 15% band. And above $186,050 the flat 10% takes over smoothly rather than creating a cliff — $18,605 at the boundary either way. The HELP/STSL repayment calculator runs these numbers for any income.

Repayment income is broader than taxable income. It's your taxable income plus reportable fringe benefits, reportable (salary-sacrificed) super contributions, net investment losses and exempt foreign employment income, added back.

This catches people out. Salary-sacrificing into super lowers your taxable income and your income tax, but not your repayment income — the sacrificed amount is added straight back, so it won't reduce your HELP repayment. Similarly, a negatively geared property that trims your taxable income does nothing to shrink the repayment: the net investment loss is reversed out. If you're planning around the $69,528 threshold, plan with repayment income, not the taxable income line on your notice of assessment. Work deductions do still help, though: a claimable $1,000 expense reduces taxable income and therefore repayment income by the same $1,000, saving 15 or 17 cents per dollar of repayment on top of the tax saving.

The one set of study and training support loan (STSL) thresholds covers HELP (including HECS-HELP and FEE-HELP), VET Student Loans (VSL), the Student Financial Supplement Scheme (SFSS), Student Start-up Loans (SSL), ABSTUDY SSL and the Australian Apprenticeship Support Loan (AASL).

If you hold more than one loan type, you still make one repayment for the year based on your repayment income; the ATO applies it across your debts in a set order rather than charging you per loan. On payslips and payment summaries you'll usually see the withholding for any of these labelled STSL, which is why HECS never appears by name even when that's the loan you have.

Because you answered yes to the study loan question on your TFN declaration, your employer withholds an extra STSL component with each pay, on top of ordinary income tax withholding. This isn't a repayment as such — nothing hits your loan during the year. It's a pre-payment collected under the PAYG system so that the compulsory amount is already covered when your return is assessed; only then does the money come off your balance. On an $80,000 salary paid fortnightly, expect the STSL component to run at about $60 a fortnight — the $1,570.80 annual figure from the table above, split across 26 pays.

Withholding is set off each individual pay, so a year of variable income can leave you over- or under-collected, squared up at tax time either way. Check what the STSL component should be on your pay with the PAYG withholding calculator, or model your whole year — income tax, Medicare levy and repayment together — in the income tax calculator.