Payroll tax in South Australia is collected by RevenueSA, not the ATO, and it applies once your wage bill crosses the state threshold. SA has one feature that sets it apart from most other states: rather than a single flat rate, it uses a variable rate that scales up across a wage band. Here is what applies for the 2026-27 financial year.
South Australia has an annual payroll tax threshold of $1,500,000, one of the more generous in the country. You pay nothing until your total Australian taxable wages cross that line. Above it, SA does something unusual: instead of jumping straight to a flat rate, the rate itself scales up gradually from 0% to 4.95% as your wages move between $1.5 million and $1.7 million. Once your wages exceed $1.7 million, you pay the flat top rate of 4.95% on your South Australian taxable wages.
The practical effect is a gentle on-ramp: employers whose wages sit just above the threshold pay a low effective rate, and the rate climbs to the full 4.95% only once you are comfortably past $1.7 million.
SA taxable wages are broad. They include salaries, superannuation, bonuses, commissions, most allowances, fringe benefits and many contractor payments. Super forms part of the base, so it sits alongside the rest of your payroll obligations rather than being separate from them. Contractor payments are a frequent trap: if a contractor is effectively working like an employee, those payments can count even though the person invoices you, which is why the employee or contractor question matters for payroll tax and not just for super and PAYG.
Not sure whether your SA wages have crossed the threshold, or how the variable rate applies to you? Book a free call and we will work through it with you.
You need to register with RevenueSA once it is clear your wages will exceed the threshold, not only once they actually have. Once registered, you lodge returns through RevenueSA Online, generally monthly, with an annual reconciliation after the financial year ends in July. If no tax is payable for a period, you still lodge.
If you have staff in South Australia and other states, you apportion your wages and SA's threshold applies only to the South Australian share. The harmonised grouping rules apply here too, so related or commonly controlled businesses are added together and share a single threshold rather than each getting their own. Splitting a business into two entities does not hand you two thresholds. Our payroll tax by state guide shows how South Australia compares with the rest of the country.
The usual traps apply in South Australia: assuming payroll tax is federal when it is administered by RevenueSA rather than the ATO, forgetting that super and many contractor payments count as wages, and assuming a second entity resets the threshold when the grouping rules say otherwise. The SA-specific one is misreading the variable rate: some employers assume they will pay the full 4.95% the moment they cross $1.5 million, when in fact the rate scales up across the $1.5 million to $1.7 million band. It is worth modelling where you actually sit.
South Australian payroll tax starts at $1.5 million of annual wages, with a variable rate that climbs from 0% to 4.95% between $1.5 million and $1.7 million and settles at 4.95% above that. Super and many contractor payments count as wages, and the grouping rules mean related businesses share one threshold. If your wages sit in that variable band, the exact figure is worth checking.
We handle payroll tax registration and lodgement as part of our fixed-fee packages, with every question answered within 24 hours. Book your free call here.
Figures are current for the 2026-27 financial year and were checked in September 2026. This article is general information only and does not take your circumstances into account. Please seek advice tailored to your situation before acting.
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