Your contractors could be employees five different ways. Find out what that costs.

No. An ABN is a registration number, not a status, and none of the five tests asks whether a worker has one. Those tests are the common law test, the Fair Work test in section 15AA, the super rule for a contract wholly or principally for labour, the payroll tax relevant contract rules and workers compensation deeming. A worker can hold an ABN, invoice you every month, and still be your employee under four of the five.

There is no single test. Five separate tests can each give a different answer for the same person. The common law test weighs eight factors together, and control and the right to delegate carry the most weight. The Fair Work Act, the super guarantee labour rule, the payroll tax relevant contract rules and workers compensation deeming then each apply their own test. This calculator runs all five on your answers.

It is the back entitlements plus the charges on top of them. Super at 12% for every year, plus the super guarantee charge with its interest, fees and uplift. Then payroll tax at your state's rate, workers compensation premium on the same wages, four weeks of annual leave and the rest of the National Employment Standards, and long service leave. This calculator prices all of it on your own figures.

Often, yes. Section 12(3) of the super guarantee law makes someone an employee for super if they work under a contract wholly or principally for their own labour, even if they are a genuine contractor for everything else. The ATO treats a contract as principally for labour when more than half its value is the person's own work. A contract with a company, or a real unfettered right to delegate, takes it outside the rule.

There is no statutory time limit on a super guarantee assessment. This calculator stops at seven years because that is where record keeping obligations and practical recovery usually stop, and it says so. If your arrangement is older than that, the real figure is larger than the one on your report, because every 30 June adds another year of unpaid super and more interest.

Because it is not just the super. For quarters up to 30 June 2026 it is the shortfall worked out on salary and wages, plus interest at 10% a year and $20 per employee per quarter, and none of it was deductible. From 1 July 2026 it is the shortfall plus notional earnings compounding daily at the general interest charge of 11.51%, an administrative uplift of up to 60%, and a late payment penalty.

Payday Super started on 1 July 2026. Super must now reach an employee's fund within 7 business days of each payday. If it arrives late, the shortfall carries notional earnings compounding daily at the general interest charge of 11.51%, plus an administrative uplift of up to 60% and a late payment penalty. The ATO sees what was paid and when through Single Touch Payroll, so late super shows up much sooner.

Often, yes. Every state and territory treats payments under a relevant contract as wages for payroll tax unless an exemption applies, and the rules catch companies and trusts too. General rates run from 4.0% to 6.75%, and thresholds start at $1,000,000. What matters is the extra tax the contractor payments cause once your other wages have used up the threshold. One exemption is a contractor who worked 90 days or fewer for you in the year.

Partly, and not the part people expect. A company defeats the super guarantee labour contract rule and most workers compensation deeming, because both need a contract with a natural person. It does not defeat the payroll tax relevant contract rules, which catch a company exactly as they catch a sole trader. And a company set up because the business insisted on it invites the personal services income rules, Part IVA and the sham contracting provisions.

For a company that is not a small business employer, the maximum is the greater of $546,000 or three times the underpayment, per contravention. A serious contravention, meaning knowing or reckless and part of a systematic pattern, raises that to $5,460,000. Sham contracting means calling employment a contract, dismissing someone to re-engage them as a contractor, or a knowingly false statement to persuade them. These are ceilings a court may impose, not amounts owing.

Yes, but only part of it. Owning up before anybody asks can reach the administrative uplift, the late payment penalty, the Part 7 penalty, payroll tax penalty tax and the deduction that would otherwise be denied. It never reaches the unpaid super, the interest or the administration fee. Timing decides it: the disclosure has to come before the relevant authority starts looking, and super, payroll tax and workers compensation are three separate authorities.

Yes, twice, and in opposite directions. In February 2022 the High Court decided Personnel Contracting and Jamsek and put the written contract at the centre of the common law test. On 26 August 2024 section 15AA of the Fair Work Act took effect and required the real substance and practical reality of the whole relationship to be looked at, for Fair Work purposes only. The tax and super tests still follow the contract.

No. It is an information service. It applies the published rules and rates to the answers you enter and shows what they produce, with every working visible. It ranks options on one stated measure, the total amount payable over the window, and does not recommend one. Whether a person is an employee is decided by a court or by the Fair Work Commission on all of the evidence, not by a calculator.