HECS & HELP Repayment Calculator
See exactly how much you'll repay in 2025–26, how indexation affects your balance, and the year your debt disappears.
HECS-HELP
2025–26 thresholds
Indexation modelling
Voluntary repayments
How HECS-HELP repayments actually work
HECS-HELP is the federal government's interest-free student loan scheme, but the "interest-free" framing is incomplete. The debt is indexed each year to keep its real value steady against inflation. From 1 June 2023, indexation switched from being purely tied to the Consumer Price Index to using the lower of CPI or the Wage Price Index — a reform applied retrospectively to 1 June 2023 and 2024 balances. That change knocked roughly $3 billion off outstanding student debt nationally.
Repayments are compulsory once your repayment income crosses the threshold (currently $54,435 for 2024–25). They're collected by the ATO through the PAYG system based on your declared HELP status. The repayment rate is marginal across nine bands, ranging from 1% at the lowest threshold to 10% above $159,664. The rate applies to your full repayment income, not just the portion above each band — and that's a quirk worth understanding before chasing voluntary repayments.
Why "repayment income" is broader than salary
The ATO uses a measure called repayment income rather than taxable income to assess your HECS obligations. It starts with taxable income, then adds back four things: reportable fringe benefits (think novated leases and salary-packaged perks), reportable employer super contributions (anything beyond the mandatory Super Guarantee, like salary-sacrificed amounts), net investment losses (negative gearing additions), and exempt foreign employment income.
This matters because strategies that work for income tax — salary-sacrificing into super, negatively gearing an investment property — don't reduce your HECS liability. The ATO designed it that way deliberately to stop high earners with debt arranging their affairs to dodge repayment.
For a salaried worker without these arrangements, repayment income equals taxable income. For someone with $20,000 of salary-sacrificed super and a $15,000 negatively-geared investment property loss, repayment income could be $35,000 higher than their taxable income — pushing them into a substantially higher HECS bracket.
Reading your result
The headline figure shows your compulsory annual repayment at your current income and band. Beneath it, the year-by-year debt projection charts how the balance moves over time as compulsory repayments come off and indexation gets added.
The "debt-free year" estimate assumes your income grows at a modest rate (a project default that can be adjusted) and that indexation runs at its long-run average. Both assumptions are uncertain — wage growth and inflation both move — so the figure is best read as a planning estimate rather than a fixed date.
The indexation timing matters more than most people realise. The annual indexation amount is added to your balance on 1 June each year, applied to whatever balance remains before end-of-year compulsory repayments are credited. That means voluntary repayments made before 1 June reduce the indexed amount; the same payment made on 2 June only saves indexation in the following cycle.
What this calculator can't do
This calc covers the standard HECS-HELP repayment journey. It does not capture:
- Other HELP loan types. FEE-HELP, OS-HELP, SA-HELP, and VET Student Loans share the same repayment system but have different lending caps and eligibility. Your aggregate balance across all HELP loan types is what indexes.
- The annual indexation rate uncertainty. The actual rate for any given year is announced by the ATO in late May using the previous March's published CPI and WPI figures from the ABS. Projections in this calculator use the most recent rate as a forward estimate.
- Bonus, commission, or irregular income spikes that push you into a higher repayment band for a single year. PAYG withholding follows your declared band; under or overpayment is settled at tax time.
- Eligibility for the now-discontinued 10% voluntary repayment bonus. That bonus ceased on 1 January 2017 and does not apply to current voluntary repayments.
For the authoritative position on your specific balance and projected repayments, the Study Assist portal and your myGov ATO account are the references. This calculator gives you the picture across your career, not a tax-return-grade figure for any single year.
Common questions
Should I make voluntary repayments on my HECS debt?
It depends on whether you have higher-priority uses for the cash and whether you have higher-rate debt. HECS is indexed at CPI or WPI (whichever is lower), which has historically run between 2% and 7%. If your alternative is paying down a credit card at 19% or a personal loan at 9%, knock those out first. If you've cleared higher-rate debt and your alternative is putting money into a savings account earning 4% before tax, voluntary HECS repayments may make more sense at higher indexation rates. The decision flips with inflation.
Why didn't my HECS balance go down even though I paid into it all year?
A common surprise. Compulsory PAYG amounts are withheld by your employer through the year, but the ATO doesn't credit them to your balance until you lodge your tax return — typically months after end of financial year. Until that lodgement, your withheld amounts sit in the ATO's holding account, not against your debt. Worse, the 1 June indexation is calculated on whatever balance shows at that date, which is usually the previous year's unpaid balance. So you can feel like you "paid all year" and still see your balance go up.
Does my HECS debt affect my home loan application?
Yes, indirectly. Lenders treat the compulsory HECS repayment as a fixed monthly outgoing in their serviceability calculation, the same way they'd treat any other regular debt repayment. A $5,000 annual HECS obligation reduces borrowing capacity by roughly $40,000–$60,000 in typical lender models, depending on income and other factors. APRA's responsible lending standards require this assessment.
Where to next
To see how your HECS repayment fits into the broader pay-and-tax picture, the pay calculator integrates HECS into the full take-home calculation across all tax brackets. For the bigger picture on where your saved cash should go once HECS is paid down — including the trade-off against super contributions — the salary sacrifice tax benefit guide compares marginal tax outcomes. And for the long-run view of compound growth on what you've kept, the compound calculator shows the multi-decade arc.