27 Fortnightly Pays in 2026-27: What Employers Need to Do About It

For most Australian employers, 2026-27 is not a 27-pay year: it only happens if you pay fortnightly on a Wednesday and 1 July 2026 was a pay day. The financial year runs from Wednesday 1 July 2026 to Wednesday 30 June 2027, so Wednesday is the only weekday that appears 53 times, and only one of the two Wednesday fortnightly cycles catches the extra pay. If you pay on a Thursday or Friday (the most common pay days), you have the usual 26 fortnights and 52 weeks. This guide shows you how to check your own calendar in two minutes, what the ATO wants you to do if the extra pay does land on you, and how to handle tax, super and salaried staff without creating a mess.

Does 2026-27 have 27 fortnightly pays? Work through the calendar

A financial year is 365 days: 52 full weeks plus one day. That extra day means whichever weekday 1 July falls on also falls on 30 June, so that weekday appears 53 times while the other six appear 52 times. In 2026-27 the weekday is Wednesday.

Fortnightly pay is a different story again, because a fortnightly cycle only touches every second Wednesday. One Wednesday cycle includes 1 July 2026 and the other includes 8 July 2026, and only the first one gets 27 pays.

Pay day	Weekly pays in 2026-27	Fortnightly pays in 2026-27
Monday	52	26
Tuesday	52	26
Wednesday, cycle including 1 July 2026	53	27
Wednesday, cycle including 8 July 2026	53	26
Thursday	52	26
Friday	52	26

For the 27-pay Wednesday cycle, the pay dates are: 1, 15 and 29 July; 12 and 26 August; 9 and 23 September; 7 and 21 October; 4 and 18 November; 2, 16 and 30 December 2026; 13 and 27 January; 10 and 24 February; 10 and 24 March; 7 and 21 April; 5 and 19 May; and 2, 16 and 30 June 2027. Count them and you get 27.

The other Wednesday cycle runs 8 July 2026 to 23 June 2027 and stops at 26, because its next pay (7 July 2027) belongs to the following year.

The two-minute check for your own payroll

You don't need to trust our table. Do this instead:

1. Find the date you actually paid staff on or after 1 July 2026. Use the date money left your account, not the end of the pay period.
2. Fortnightly: add 364 days (26 fortnights). If that date is on or before 30 June 2027, you have 27 pays. For a 1 July 2026 pay day, 364 days later is 30 June 2027, so it's in. For a 2 July pay day it's 1 July 2027, so it's out.
3. Weekly: you have 53 pays only if your first pay day of the year was Wednesday 1 July 2026.
4. Monthly: you always have 12. The problem never arises.

One trap: if a public holiday pushed a pay forward or back, it's the actual payment date that counts. A Thursday payer who paid early on Wednesday 1 July 2026 because of a bank holiday or a one-off change hasn't switched to a 27-pay year, but check that your software isn't treating it that way.

When the next 27-pay years fall

It's worth knowing what's coming, because the big one for most employers is next year.

Financial year	53 weekly / 27 fortnightly pays if your pay day is...
2025-26	Tuesday (cycle including 1 July 2025)
2026-27	Wednesday (cycle including 1 July 2026)
2027-28	Thursday (cycle including 1 July 2027) and Friday (cycle including 2 July 2027), because February 2028 has 29 days
2028-29	Saturday (cycle including 1 July 2028)
2029-30	Sunday (cycle including 1 July 2029)
2030-31	Monday (cycle including 1 July 2030)

If you pay on Thursdays or Fridays, put a note in your diary for June 2027. Everything below will apply to you then.

Why an extra pay causes a tax problem

The ATO's weekly and fortnightly tax tables are built on 52 and 26 pays a year. Each fortnight, your software works out how much to withhold as if the employee will earn that fortnight's wage 26 times, which lets it spread the $18,200 tax-free threshold and the lower tax brackets evenly across the year.

When there are 27 pays, the employee actually earns 27 fortnights' wages in the year, but each pay was still withheld as though the total would be 26. The whole year's earnings are a fortnight higher than the tables assumed, so the tax withheld falls short of the tax owed. The employee gets a smaller refund than expected, or a bill. Study loan repayments are worked out the same way, so people with a HELP debt can be caught twice.

The ATO's own extra-withholding figures show the size of it. At $12 a fortnight across 27 pays the shortfall is about $324; at $48 a fortnight it's about $1,296. Not a disaster, but nobody likes a surprise bill in July, and it's usually the employer who cops the blame.

The 2026-27 tables also changed for another reason: the 16% tax rate dropped to 15% from 1 July 2026, so every withholding schedule was reissued. If your software is up to date it has already picked this up. For the full list of this year's rates and changes, see our payroll changes for 2026-27.

What the ATO says employers should do

The ATO's fortnightly tax table (NAT 1006) and weekly tax table (NAT 1005) each carry a short section on this. The instructions boil down to:

• Tell your staff. The ATO expects you to let employees know when a 27-pay (or 53-pay) year applies so they can decide what to do.
• Withhold extra only if asked. The additional amounts are voluntary. An employee who's worried about a shortfall can ask you to take more out of each pay; you can't impose it.
• Get the request in writing. An employee can arrange an upward variation by agreeing it with you in writing in any format, or by completing a withholding declaration through ATO online services. Keep the request with your payroll records.

The ATO's additional withholding amounts for 2026-27

These are the amounts the ATO suggests an employee can ask you to add to every pay (as at September 2026). Confirm them against the current ATO tax table before you set them up.

Fortnightly earnings	Extra to withhold each fortnight
$1,700 to $5,199	$12
$5,200 to $7,249	$27
$7,250 and over	$48

Weekly earnings	Extra to withhold each week
$875 to $2,574	$3
$2,575 to $3,649	$7
$3,650 and over	$12

Two practical points. First, these figures assume the extra comes out of every pay in the year. It's now September, so a Wednesday-cycle employer has already run five pays; an employee who wants to catch up over the remaining 22 can nominate a higher fixed amount, and any amount they ask for in writing is fine. Second, employees who'd rather keep the cash can simply do nothing and settle up at tax time, or make a voluntary payment to the ATO themselves. Your job is to inform and offer, not to decide for them.

Your action plan as an employer

1. Confirm whether it affects you

Run the two-minute check above. If your first pay day of the year wasn't Wednesday 1 July 2026, you can stop here, forward this page to whoever runs payroll, and set a reminder for June 2027.

2. Notify staff early and in writing

A short message to all fortnightly-paid staff does the job. Something like:

Because of how the calendar falls, our pay cycle has 27 pay days in the 2026-27 financial year instead of the usual 26. The ATO's tax tables assume 26, so slightly less tax than normal will be withheld across the year and you may get a smaller refund or a small tax bill. If you'd like us to withhold an extra fixed amount from each pay to cover it, reply to this email with the amount. The ATO suggests $12, $27 or $48 a fortnight depending on your earnings. This is optional.

Keep a copy. If someone later complains about a tax bill, you can show you told them.

3. Record each request

For every employee who opts in, keep the written request (an email is fine) with your payroll records. Note the amount and the pay it starts from. Don't act on a verbal request.

4. Set it up in your payroll software

None of the major packages need a special "27-pay mode". You use the existing per-employee extra tax setting:

• Xero Payroll: open the employee, go to the Taxes tab and use the option to increase the amount of tax withheld. Xero only accepts a fixed dollar amount per pay, not a percentage.
• MYOB: open the employee's card, go to Payroll Details, then Taxes, and enter the amount in the Extra Tax field.
• QuickBooks Payroll (powered by Employment Hero): open the employee, go to Pay Run Inclusions, add a Tax Adjustment and set an amount per pay run. You can set a start and end date, which is handy.

Whichever product you use, set the extra to stop after the last pay in June 2027, or diarise removing it. Left running, it'll keep deducting into 2027-28 when it's no longer needed. If your software doesn't have a per-employee extra tax field at all, that's a sign it's overdue for replacement; see our accounting software comparison.

5. Report it through STP as normal

The extra withholding is just PAYG withholding. It flows through your normal Single Touch Payroll report on each pay day, adds to the W2 amount on your activity statement and appears on the employee's income statement at year end. There's no separate form, code or ATO notification. If you're unsure how withholding is reported, our Single Touch Payroll guide walks through it.

Super in a 27-pay year

Super guarantee is 12% of each pay's qualifying earnings, so a 27th pay means a 27th super contribution. Under payday super, which started on 1 July 2026, each contribution must be received by the employee's fund within 7 business days of the pay day, so there's no bunching it up at quarter end. The year's total SG will be about 1/26 higher than a 26-pay year, which is correct: the employees earned more in that financial year, so they're owed more super.

Two things to check:

• Fixed-dollar salary sacrifice. If an employee sacrifices a set amount into super each pay, 27 deductions instead of 26 could push their total concessional contributions over the annual cap. Flag it to them and let them decide whether to trim the amount.
• Cash flow. Twenty-seven pay runs with super attached means one more outgoing than you budgeted for. Small for one employee, noticeable across a team.

Everything else about payday super — deadlines, the new-employee exception, what happens if you're late — is covered in our payday super guide.

Salaried staff: annual salary ÷ 26 or ÷ 27?

This is where employers get into trouble, so read it carefully.

Hourly and award-based staff are paid for the hours in each pay period. Twenty-seven pays covers twenty-seven fortnights of work. There's nothing to adjust.

Salaried staff are usually paid one twenty-sixth of their annual salary each fortnight, which is what most payroll software does by default. In a 27-pay year they receive 27 of those payments inside one financial year. That looks like an "extra" pay, but it isn't: the 27 pays cover 27 fortnights of work, and the corresponding shortfall sits in the years either side. Over a decade or so it evens out. It's a timing quirk, not an overpayment.

Some employers are tempted to divide the annual salary by 27 for the year so the total matches the contract figure. Before you do:

• Read the contract. Wording like "$85,000 per annum, paid fortnightly" is generally read as a pay rate, not a cap on what can be paid in a financial year. Cutting each pay by around 3.7% to hit the annual figure can be a unilateral change to pay, which is a breach of contract.
• Check the award. Award minimums are set as hourly or weekly rates. A reduced fortnightly amount can drop a lower-paid salaried employee under the minimum for the hours actually worked in that fortnight, and that's an underpayment regardless of what the annual total says.
• Think about the message. Staff who see a smaller pay slip in a cost-of-living squeeze won't care about calendar maths.

If a contract genuinely says the salary is paid in 26 equal instalments and you want to hold to it, get advice from an employment lawyer or HR adviser before touching anyone's pay. For most small businesses the sensible path is to keep paying the normal fortnightly amount, tell staff about the tax side, and move on.

Mistakes to avoid

• Assuming it's a 53-week year for you. Only Wednesday pay days are affected in 2026-27. Thursday and Friday payers, your turn is 2027-28.
• Withholding extra without a request. It's the employee's call. Doing it unasked is a payroll error, even with good intentions.
• Forgetting to turn it off. Set an end date or a reminder for July 2027.
• Changing the tax scale instead of adding a fixed amount. The tax table stays the same; you add a flat dollar amount on top.
• Reducing salaried pay to "fix" the total. See above. It creates far more risk than it removes.
• Not telling anyone. The ATO expects you to inform staff, and a short email now is cheaper than a dozen awkward conversations next July.

If payroll isn't your strong suit, this is exactly the kind of once-a-decade wrinkle a good bookkeeper handles in an hour. Our guide to hiring a bookkeeper or BAS agent explains what to look for.

Key takeaways

• 2026-27 has 27 fortnightly (or 53 weekly) pays only for Wednesday pay days on the cycle that included 1 July 2026. Every other pattern has the normal 26 or 52.
• Check your own calendar: first pay day on or after 1 July 2026 plus 364 days. If that lands on or before 30 June 2027, you have 27 pays.
• The ATO tables assume 26 pays, so employees can be under-withheld. The ATO suggests an extra $12, $27 or $48 a fortnight by earnings band (as at September 2026), but only at the employee's written request.
• Set the extra as a fixed per-pay amount in Xero, MYOB or QuickBooks, and switch it off after the last June 2027 pay. It reports through STP like any other withholding.
• Super is 12% of every pay, paid within 7 business days under payday super, so a 27th pay means a 27th super contribution. Check fixed salary-sacrifice amounts against the concessional cap.
• Don't divide salaries by 27 without legal advice. Keep paying the normal fortnightly amount and treat it as timing.
• Thursday and Friday payers: 2027-28 is your 27-pay year. Diarise it.

Where to get help

• ATO fortnightly tax table (NAT 1006): the "27 pays in a year" section and current extra-withholding amounts are at ato.gov.au/tax-rates-and-codes/tax-table-fortnightly. The weekly equivalent (NAT 1005) is at ato.gov.au/tax-rates-and-codes/tax-table-weekly.
• ATO withholding declarations and variations: how an employee formally asks for more tax to be withheld, at ato.gov.au/forms-and-instructions/withholding-declarations-and-variations.
• ATO payday super: deadlines and employer obligations at ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/super-for-employers.
• Fair Work Ombudsman: pay rates, award minimums and what you can and can't change in an employment contract, at fairwork.gov.au or 13 13 94.
• Your accountant or BAS agent: for confirming your pay calendar, setting up the extra withholding correctly and reviewing salary contract wording before any change.