HECS-HELP Repayment Band Distribution, FY 2025-26
The Australian Taxation Office's compulsory HECS-HELP repayment schedule for FY 2025-26 splits incomes into 4 bands. The first band, taxable income below $67,000 - carries a 0% rate (no compulsory repayment). For income above $179,286 the high-earner rule applies a flat 10.0% of total repayment income; the bands in between are marginal. The widest single band by dollar range is band 1, spanning $66,999 of income.
The schedule
| Band | Income from | Income to | Width | Rate | Repay at top |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $0 | $66,999 | $66,999 | 0.0% | $0 |
| 2 | $67,000 | $124,999 | $57,999 | 15.0% | $8,700 |
| 3 | $125,000 | $179,285 | $54,285 | 17.0% | $17,929 |
| 4 | $179,286 | - | open | 10.0% | open |
Repayment at top of each band
Compulsory repayment at the top of each band, FY 2025-26
The dollar repayment at the upper income edge of each band
Marginal rate by band
Percentage repayment rate by band
The top marginal rate under the 2025-26 schedule once you cross the threshold
Pattern observations
Three structural patterns stand out from the FY 2025-26 schedule:
- The schedule has just two marginal rates, 15% from $67,000 to $125,000 and 17% from $125,000 to $179,285, applied only to the income within each band, plus a flat 10%-of-total rule above $179,285.
- Because the rates are marginal, there are no longer any repayment cliffs: a dollar of extra income changes only the repayment on that dollar, not on your whole income.
- The cumulative repayment-at-top-of-band rises smoothly with income, reaching about $8,700 at $125,000 and about $17,900 at $179,285 before the high-earner flat rule takes over.
The 2025 reform removed the old repayment cliffs
Until 1 July 2025 the HECS-HELP rate applied to your entire repayment income once you crossed a threshold, so earning $1 more could move your whole income onto a higher rate, a genuine cliff. The Making Student Loan Repayments Fairer reform replaced that stepped schedule with a marginal one: each rate now applies only to the portion of income within its band, exactly like income tax, so those cliffs no longer exist. A worker at $67,000 owes nothing; at $80,000 they owe 15% of the $13,000 above the threshold = $1,950. See our HECS-HELP explainer for the mechanics.
How the FY 2025-26 schedule compares to recent years
The 2025-26 minimum threshold of $67,000 is a substantial increase from the $54,435 that applied in 2024-25 under the old stepped schedule. The reform also collapsed the previous nineteen flat bands (which ran from 1% to 10% of total income) into a marginal structure with just a few brackets, nil below $67,000, 15% to $125,000, 17% to $179,285, and 10% of total income above that, eliminating the threshold cliffs that defined the earlier system.
Methodology
We store the ATO-published FY 2025-26 schedule in the hecs_thresholds table and compute band metrics, width, repay-at-top, repay-at-min, live at page render. The numbers on this page are not hardcoded; refreshing the page after any future schedule update would reflect the new figures immediately.
Source: Australian Taxation Office HELP, TSL and SFSS repayment thresholds and rates · 2025-26